Imagine getting a curve ball thrown at you in your early twenties. The man you thought was your father confesses to you that he isn’t your biological father. It’s painful enough the man she thought was her father wasn’t really there for her while she was growing up but at least she knew who he was. There was always a glimmer of hope he would step up again like he did when he taught her to ride a bike when she was five years old. Every girl deserves to have a father who will be a daddy too.
That life just wasn’t in the cards for her. Luckily for her, her boyfriend popped the question and she was just too busy planning a wedding to even think about or even how to process what had just happened to her. The frontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until one reaches her mid twenties. For her, that had to be a good thing. How does one even begin to understand something so complicated? Human betrayal can weigh heavily on the mind after a certain period in your life. For me, the betrayal of my parents didn’t fully register until after I had my own children. The hope I had for them to be the parents and grandparents I had always wanted and needed was gone by the time I hit forty.
But I knew who they were. She didn’t. Fortunately, she went on with her life. She was a young working mother raising babies and that alone consumed most of her time. It’s either a gift or a curse to be able to completely block something out your mind. This is traumatic. No matter how you look at it.
She’s a strong woman who persevered but something inside her was missing. In between changing diapers and feeding babies, something kept gnawing at her. She had to know who her father was. Too much anxiety was spent wondering what part of her was missing. So many questions and so little answers. Who is your father and where is he from? What does he look like? Is he even alive? Will you ever find him? If you do, will he accept you or shut the door on you forever causing you to wonder, “why me?”
Considering everything going on in her life, she could no longer take it. The unknown had to be known. She decided it was time for her to find her father. The little information her mother gave her didn’t help much. It was spring of 1986 and her mother did what most teenagers do–she had a little too much fun. Knowing that was a dead end, she turned to the ancestry kits. She must have had luck on her side because all it took was one swab out of her mouth from ancestrydna.com. She could not contain herself when those results hit her inbox. Wanda Means was at the top of her list as being a “close family relationship.”
I guess we both won the centimorgan lottery. Imagine getting excited over centimorgans? I can honestly say I had never heard that word before. It’s becoming mainstream now with so many people finding long lost relatives and in this case, new unknown relatives.
Will she find what she’s looking for?
The moment she saw my name, she started googling. Lucky for her, I can be easily found as I have a big mouth and like to express my not so normal thoughts on my blog. Never mind my blog and my rants. I’m sure she was thinking who is this crazy woman. Never mind the words, it was the pictures–more specifically, it was the eyes. My brother and I have the same green eyes. She just knew it had to be me. So, she sends me this message, “I apologize for sending you this crazy yet extremely hopeful message.”
It was midnight and her late night due diligence didn’t bother to tell her I am NOT a night owl.
I have a hard time sleeping and it’s difficult to turn it down a notch much less shut this tortured brain off. The last thing I need is any sort of dopamine spike in the middle of the night when I have finally shut down all external stimuli. After I was finally comatose, her text lights up my phone and ultimately lit up my entire life. So much for sleeping. My brain is wide awake now! I can just feel her excitement in her words. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Picture after picture of her youth. She was definitely the female version of my brother.
After exchanging photos of our doppelgangers and non stop texting for what seemed like hours, it was time to break the news to my brother. First things first. I had to tell my ex husband. Don’t all women call their ex with such exciting news? After I told him all he said was, “Can I please be on the phone when you call him? I have to hear his reaction!” They have a great relationship and maintained their friendship long after we divorced so, of course, I obliged. I told him not to say anything while I was on the call to my brother. So much for that sacred confidentiality between two exes. Oh wait. That only applies if you’re married. He started giggling on the phone the moment Mike answered. So much for all that training he had as a professional actor.
“Hey.” That’s my standard greeting to my brother. His standard reply is always, “Yo!” I know. Such stimulating conversation, but it was eight in the morning. He knew something was up when I asked him where he was in March of 1986. Odd question this early in the morning and Richard isn’t helping by laughing on the other end of the phone.
“Mike, are you sitting down?”
“Did someone die?”
“Actually, quite the opposite, Mike!”
Instead of telling him, I just sent him some of the pics she shared with me. Oh, did it get quiet on the other end of that phone…
It was one of those mic drop (pun intended) moments in life. Richard just couldn’t stop laughing. He loves Mike. He’s just one of the good guys and you can’t help but love the guy. Unfortunately, Richard’s middle school prepubescent behavior didn’t help the massive bomb I had just dropped on my brother.
I realize it was a lot of information to process that early in the morning. Not only did he just acquire a new daughter, he also now has three grandsons.
So much for a boring, regular Tuesday morning.
Men can drop their seed anywhere and have no clue they just helped create a human. Obviously, it’s quite different for women. With the onslaught of DNA kits everywhere, so many people are finally able to fill life long holes by finding their families.
This story is ever evolving and has turned out to have a happy ending. Sadly, not all fathers want to be found and this is causing an uproar in families all over. I’m just grateful that my brother and his wife welcomed Britt and her precious family in their lives.
As for my fiance, his accidental DNA Christmas gift turned out to be one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. I found a new niece and she found her father. Arguably, the best gift in all of this was given to her oldest son who is a massive WWE fan. As it turns out, Randy just happens to work for #WWE. Guess who got to go to his first RAW show? Thank you, Randy. This is truly the gift that keeps giving!
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Wanda, I am so glad this reunion worked out for you and your family. It really is inspirational, and I hope it continues to grow and you & your family make up for lost time together.
I was struck my the title of your blog “Painful Wisdom”, as I had a similar situation where it didn’t turn out nearly as well for me as yours has. For a multitude of reasons, I didn’t speak to my biological father for over 35 yrs after he & my mom divorced. During that period, I often thought that I wanted a relationship with him, but knew it would have to be on my terms because of the physical & mental abuse he inflicted on me as a child growing up in his house.
I got a wild hair, and flew out to Dulles Airport in Feb 2015 (he had moved to Reston, VA in the late 1980’s with his wife – I only found out after getting an online private investigator involved) for the purpose of putting this to bed once and for all. When I arrived, and checked into my hotel, I called him up to say I was in town for the weekend. And if he wanted to have any kind of relationship with me going forward, he’d need to let me know right then. Because I wouldn’t be asking him again. He said, “I need to check with my wife and see if it’s OK” (that should’ve been a big red flag!). She said OK, and we ended up having a good weekend together in Washington DC. And after I left, I her from both his wife and stepdaughter thanking me for taking the initiative to reach out, because they both knew he would never have done so on his own…
We agreed to give it a try, and for a while, it was OK. I thought we were making progress. Then at Christmas that year, my sister (who was dying of cancer), told me while she was happy for me that I had reconciled with him, she didn’t have the energy to deal with him and all of her own painful memories while fighting her illness. And she wanted to save her strength to maximize her remaining time with her own family. My father contacted me after getting a letter from her in early January 2016 where she exlained that to him. He ended up blaming ME for her decision, even though I reminded him that both she and him were grown ass adults, and I was not (or never had agreed to be) a referee for their relationship. My sister passed away on April 15, 2016, and I let her family decide if mt father would be invited to her funeral. They decided not to.
The last time I contacted him was about a week after she had passed. I let him know it had happened, and the funeral was a few days afterwards. He blamed me once again for her cutting ties, and for her family not inviting him to the funeral. So, I told him while I was very sorry he felt that way, I had nothing to do with that decision and would have never forced them to invite him to be there when he’d had every chance to be a part of our lives for the previous 35+ years. He basically cut me off after that, and I’ve never spoken to him again.
My whole point in this is that I truly identified with your story. And or me, my situation has certainly been an example of “Painful Wisdom”. I feel like I did my best to create something new and manageable out of the ashes of my biological father’s life decisions. But he clearly had not grown in many areas of his life, and I was not willing to subordinate my mental health and well being any longer to accomodate him. I’ve struggled with this my whole life up to that point, because I had always believed the Commandment to “honor your Father and Mother” meant I had to love them unconditionally. But I was freed from that concept a few years later when I spoke to my mom’s minister about feeling guilty for putting her in a assisted living facility due to her Alzheimers dementia. She said, “Mike, it doesn’t say you’re to *love* your father and mother, it says you’re to *honor* them”. And when like my Dad they make it clear that they want things a certain way, or when for my Mom the best thing for them is to be living where they can receive professional care, that IS honoring them. Even when it may feel like you’re not really loving them. So, I’ve resolved my anger with him, and have even forgiven him, but my way of honoring him is to give him to the care of his new family. And I really hope that he’s learned a few things to have better relationships with those around him that I guess he’s learned to love.
To close, I totally understand the need to find out why people in our lives go missing. And I always knew I needed to go through my own journey with my parents, and ultimately accept the results. And I have been gifted to have learned a lot from his rejection of me. The fact that my father likely never really loved me for me has helped me be a way better father to my boys. I let them know in no uncertain terms every time I see or talk to them how much I love them both for who they are and for what they are contributing to the world. It’s my hope that you and you brother continue to strengthen your bonds with your newly found family, because when it comes right down to it, it’s the best part of our lives here on Earth!!
Amazing story! love it!
Wow Mike…i certainly can feel your pain…thank you for sharing…
Just goes to show everything, good and bad, shapes us. This was a wonderful story that came out of a bad situation….and it is so well done, like all of your writing. Love it!!
Thank you my friend…xoxo
Loved reading this.
She is definitely your people and her son looks like he could be one of your kids – what a gift… that keeps giving. Thank you for weaving this so beautifully and I can totally see/hear Richard giggling like an adolescent on the phone ?
you know my ex so well….miss you friend…
Love this! You had me smiling, laughing and crying, all at the same time! (It’s accentuated by the fact that I can see and hear you telling this story) So wonderful! I can’t even imagine her surprise when she say that first photo of you and realized you both have those gorgeous green eyes! So happy for your entire family…and Richard…lol! So many née memories to make! And the big question…Does she like hockey? I hope you bring her to a game so we can meet her! <3 Vanessa
Thank you for your kind words…they love WWE!!! I’ll work on the hockey ?