Be Careful What You Wish For

Growing up, I often found myself alone. My two sisters, both nearly a decade older, lived in a world far removed from mine. They had their own lives, their own interests, leaving me to navigate childhood mostly on my own. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my childhood—I cherished it in many ways—but the silence of solitude was always there, quietly lingering in the background. I filled my days with books and solo adventures, but no matter how vivid my imagination, the sense of isolation never fully faded. I would often catch myself hoping, almost desperately, that my parents might have another child, a sibling closer to my age who could share in my little world. But that hope remained unfulfilled, leaving me to continue my solitary journey.

As I entered my teenage years, I began drifting toward the wrong crowds. Rebellion seemed to be my only form of expression, my way of pushing back against the life that felt so constraining. I surrounded myself with people far older than me—people who were lost in their own ways—and I started doing things I knew I shouldn’t, yet couldn’t stop. It felt like I was searching for something—perhaps my place in the world, or some version of myself that felt real. At home, I was the black sheep, always on the outside looking in. My family no longer trusted me; it was as though we spoke different languages, clashing in our every interaction. It wasn’t just their disapproval that stung—it was the sense that I didn’t fit, that somehow I was out of place, both in my family and in the world around me. I felt adrift, caught between wanting to belong and fearing that there was nowhere I truly did.

Adulthood didn’t bring the clarity I had hoped for. Instead, it was a whirlwind of failed relationships and fleeting career choices. One ex-boyfriend blurred into the next, each relationship beginning with the hope that maybe this time things would be different, only to end in disappointment. I jumped from job to job, searching for something that would stick, something that made me feel purposeful. But nothing ever seemed to last.

It wasn’t until I became pregnant with my daughter that my life found a kind of anchor. Her arrival changed everything. Suddenly, there was someone who needed me, someone whose well-being depended on me pulling myself together. I couldn’t afford to drift anymore. Raising her became my mission, my compass. Every part of me, every ounce of energy I had, went into trying to be the mother she deserved. In many ways, she became my reason for finally settling down—she gave me a focus and a responsibility that I had never truly experienced before.

When my daughter turned one, the world was thrown into chaos as Covid-19 swept across the globe. The days of lockdown left me isolated in a small house with a toddler, and the loneliness I had felt growing up seemed to creep back into my life, only this time it was sharper, more consuming. With the world outside so uncertain and my social connections dwindling, I found solace in writing—pouring my thoughts onto paper, trying to make sense of the storm both inside and out.

It was during this time that I also turned to another project: researching my ancestry. My mother had always spoken of our Native American roots, but no matter how much I searched, I could never seem to trace it. It felt like an elusive piece of our identity, just out of reach. Determined to settle the question once and for all, I ordered an AncestryDNA test. In that strange, suspended time of the pandemic, I waited for the results, hoping they might offer some answers—not just about my heritage, but about myself.

When the results finally arrived, I opened them with a mix of anticipation and unease, hoping for some hidden story to emerge from the past. But what I found was… nothing. My ancestry was as plain and ordinary as it could be—no trace of the Native American roots my mother had spoken of. Just a long, unbroken line tracing back to the United Kingdom. I stared at the results, feeling an odd sense of deflation. There was nothing remarkable, no mystery waiting to be uncovered. I was, quite simply, as white as one could be.

The journey I had begun with such curiosity ended in an anticlimactic thud. I put the papers away, feeling a strange mix of disappointment and resignation. Whatever I had hoped to discover in my DNA wasn’t there. It was just another unanswered question that would remain a part of the past, and with that, I decided to put the search behind me.

And for a while, I truly did put the search behind me. Life moved on, the routine of motherhood and the day-to-day demands kept me busy enough to forget about ancestry altogether. But months later, out of the blue, I received a message on social media from a teenager living on the opposite side of the country. The message was insistent: "Check your AncestryDNA matches."

Curiosity piqued, I logged in, not expecting much. But when I looked at my matches, my heart skipped a beat. There she was—the same teenager from the message—appearing in my DNA results, labeled "close family – half sibling or first cousin." My hands trembled as I stared at the screen. My pulse quickened with a thrill of excitement, a rush of something new and unexpected. I had found a new relative, a piece of family I never knew existed. In my otherwise ordinary, predictable family, this was a revelation.

Overcome with excitement, I immediately called my mother, barely able to contain the news. I thought she’d be just as thrilled as I was. But instead of joy, the conversation took a turn I never could have anticipated. With a heavy sigh, she revealed a secret she had kept from me my entire life: I had been conceived using a sperm donor. The man I had always known as my father—the man I thought I understood so well—was not my biological father.

In that moment, I realized I hadn’t just stumbled upon a new relative—I had opened Pandora’s box.

It’s been four years since that day, and Pandora’s box proved deeper than I ever imagined. As the pieces of my true origins began to fall into place, so did the understanding of why I had always felt like the black sheep in my family. The disconnect I’d sensed for so long finally made sense—my temperament, my quirks, and even some of my struggles weren’t just a product of my upbringing. They were traits I shared with my biological father’s side, a family I had never known existed.

In the years since that fateful discovery, I’ve uncovered so much. Not only about my biological father and the siblings I share with him, but also about donor conception itself. The more I learned, the more I realized how unregulated it was back when I was conceived. It remains under regulated even now, but back then, it was practically the Wild West. Parents weren’t encouraged to tell their donor-conceived children the truth, leaving many like me in the dark. Those children grow up unaware, not knowing to take a DNA test that might shatter everything they thought they knew.

And here’s the part that haunts me: I have dozens—perhaps even up to a hundred—half-siblings scattered across the country. Siblings I will never meet, siblings I might unknowingly pass by in a store, sit next to in a café, or share a casual conversation with, never knowing the bond we share. The thought of it is dizzying, overwhelming in its vastness. My family, as I once knew it, has expanded into something so large and unknown that it’s both awe-inspiring and unsettling.

I have a large family now, yes. But it’s a family I will never fully know. While I am, and always will be, a daughter to the parents who raised me, there’s another part of me that belongs to this invisible, unknowable family—this web of half-siblings, scattered like leaves in the wind. I stand with a foot in both worlds, never truly belonging to either. Forever straddling two identities, two lives. One known, one forever out of reach.