You Can’t Erase Me
I did a Webinar this afternoon for our partners at Right to Know with my friend and fellow Angel Ashlee. We practiced on Friday, and I’ve looked at my DNA several times over the past few days. Friday, everything was good, and last night when I logged off around 10 pm, everything was good. This afternoon, I logged on about 20 minutes before the Webinar and pulled up my DNA, and… something was missing—or rather, SOMEONE. TWO, someone’s to be specific. Specifically, my top two matches. My paternal half-siblings. Or two of them. The reasons I found out I was an NPE. Had it been just that 525 cm match further down, I would have never known and gone on with my life blissfully unaware and never be where I am today. Can you imagine where I would be now? I can’t. I don’t want to think about it. For all the pain and heartbreak I have experienced in the last 4 ½ years… look what I have done with it. I’ve turned my mess into a message, my pain into a purpose.
Why now? I had thought I had gotten past my angry phase. I thought I was in my acceptance phase. My world will never be how I imagined it; I will never have the relationships I crave. The ones that others are allowed, but I am not. Board meeting tonight and after we shared some personal stories that made me cry because of the unfairness of it all. Laura has 6 brothers, Nicole has her Dad, Christine has family members she resembles. I always wanted a big family, tons of siblings.
The irony in all of this? I just finished interviewing a lovely man from the Midwest who recently found a half-sister. He is the biological child, much like my half-sister is. What was his response when I thanked him for accepting his new sister? “This isn’t her fault.” I will admit it made me cry. Oh, I knew the mythical “good sibling” like this guy existed. I’ve had more than my share of clients come across them. Heck, my friend Kelly W. is one too. I’ve known Kelly for about three years from some support group or other. She has a great name, no? She recently called me and said, “guess what I got for Christmas?” Apparently, another half-sibling, who was born in Germany. She has offered to be a half-sibling to me, instead of the one I got. But it isn’t a sister that I want. It’s the BROTHER. She has three and have one. She’s offered whichever one I can make talk to me.
Immediately after typing that last sentence, I called Kelly and tried not to cry. “Nice,” she says when I tell her my news. “She can do whatever she wants to make the world fit her reality, but the truth of the matter is, you exist, and your father was a flawed person. But you’ve got me; you’re stuck with me,” she cackled. “I don’t know what the big deal is; this isn’t your fault, this isn’t my brother’s fault, the people to blame are the ones that were there when the baby was made.” And yet… it still ends up feeling like my fault. While I love Kelly with all of my heart, it’s just not the same.
But I’m not going anywhere.
Sowing the Seeds of Healing
