30 Days 'til Daughterhood

Father-Daughter day at school was one of my earliest memories where I knew something was off. The other kids spent the day pridefully showing off their desks to their dads. The sight of them, beaming with joy, stopped me in my tracks. I wondered, why was I alone?

As far as I knew, which wasn't saying much, I had the same 'father' as my older siblings. This man was never a part of our lives and never would be.

The doubt began as tiny seeds, vague and debatable. One could argue I didn't carry the guy's last name due to preference, not a paternity issue. So the debate raged on. It doesn't help that everyone knows there are many exceptions in the genetic game. You can't simply base your paternity off of something like hair color.

Around age seventeen, I had a heart-to-heart with my mom about my dad's identity. We went on a bike ride at a blissful park that felt nostalgic to us. It was the therapy I'd always craved to have with her. These years would prove to be some of the hardest in our relationship. On that bike trail, our stone walls busted wide open and our hearts were vulnerable. That's when she told me there was a chance I had a different father.

The year was 2013, according to Billboard, "Thriftshop" by Macklemore was the number one song. It wasn't a time that at-home DNA services were a topic of discussion in our lives. Life had a way of moving on.

When we're young, we connect with our identity through our parents. What we experience, or lack thereof, in our relationship can follow us well into our adult lives. Jed Diamond explains it well in the article How Absent Fathers Impact Our Adult Relationships

"Picture a hole in our souls, in the shape of our father. How does that affect how I feel about myself? How would that affect my ability to have a good relationship with anybody? How would it affect my self-worth? My physical health? A lot of these are related."

Last year I received a 23&me kit as a gift. I immediately sent it out for testing.

Before reading the results, I thought to myself, 'I'm still 75% sure I have the same dad as my siblings'. The denial didn't want to crack. Soon, I received a message from my 'top relative' on 23&Me. We immediately dove into a full-blown investigation as we try to figure out who in our family connects us. We spent hours putting together this puzzle. It became a daily routine. I'd message her with a new idea. She would send me her thoughts and vice versa. Through her, I connected with other family members. Some of them had a similar experience to this one. At this point, I was equipped with a handful of supportive 'new family', a Reddit subpage, and the whole internet at my fingertips. I began to believe this manhunt would be possible after all.

I distinctively remember another late night in the search. I needed someone to pull me out of the depths of my denial. I craved affirmation. I called my mom at an absurd hour, and we talked about what she could remember from 25 years ago. One last name in my matches stood out. Then I had a lead. I began the excruciating process of using a name, location, and age range to narrow down some actual results. I can't tell you how many pages I stumbled across claiming to be a "search engine for people" that require you to pay to see any of the information.

Trying to contact people through 23&Me was slow. I searched the same names up on Facebook and sent them a message asking for help. One of them turned out to be my half-sister. It was a few hours between those messages and her three-way call with our dad. Before I could process the situation, I heard his voice on the other end of a phone. He was as bewildered as I was.

Then our phone calls became a daily ritual. We agreed we wanted to put the doubt to rest for good. A seed of doubt can quickly grow into a vine of thorns. His DNA test confirmed a truth we seemed to know. Deep down there was something about how we connected. We acted as if we had 20 years of making up to do.

There will always be a part of me that's sad we lost out on those years. To face the reality of lost time is a grieving process. We both understand that we're lucky to have found each other. For me, it's the ability to laugh, to connect, to feel our lives changing in real-time. The days we've talked are some of the most inspiring days of my life. This experience has shown me the possibilities of life and how it can change this fast in less than 30 days.

I am lucky to have located my biological dad. What I wasn't expecting was the awe-inspiring people who were kind enough to help someone they didn't even know.

I aspire to live life with that same flow of kindness and to remember that life surprises us all when we least expect it.