Thank you for sharing your story. I, too, am an NPE and the memoir I’ve written is all about this discovery, its aftermath, and the psychological underpinnings that complicated it all. I was struck by a word you used describing the moment if your discovery—vertigo. Dani Shapiro had that same experience. As do I…though my unmooring was lasting. It’s so hard to understand why something that “changes everything but changes nothing” can feel so destabilizing. I so relate to your experiences and am glad you kept pursuing in order to know the truth.
Absolutely, it feels like the floor dropped out from under you. I don't think recipient parents, donors, or fertility doctors mean to be callous, they just can't understand the experience emotionally, only intellectually from a distance.
WHOA, Eric. This is huge. Thank you for sharing your story, and with such compelling writing. The best word I can think to describe how this must feel (not knowing myself how it feels) is unmooring. I did 23andMe years ago too, and specifically chose not to identify potential relatives or be identified. We have some truly nutty distant cousins, but that’s all we know about. I really couldn’t bear to know anything more.
One of my four siblings - a brother - is a bit unhinged in very similar ways to my paternal uncle (my dad’s half brother), who lived next door to us growing up. There have long been jokes in my family that he was sired by my uncle. The funny thing is, this brother and I are the only two redheads out of the five of us. Might I have also been sired by my uncle? I can’t bear the thought and heft of all of this. I’m grateful to have my father’s cheekbones to anchor me into reality (or at least to my perceptions).
How are things now with your parents? And do you have any siblings with whom you were raised?
Thank you for the thoughtful reply! It is definitely a big decision whether or not to be open to matching. As my story shows, if you choose to cross that threshold there can be BIG revelations.
If you are interested in the subject from the science angle, Dr. Siddhartha Mukerjee's book "The Gene: An Intimate History" is a tour de force of 200 years of molecular biology, delicately interwoven with his own family's history of immigration, mental illness, and genetic diseases. Highly, highly recommend it.
As for my family, we're working to move forward, but that's all I'll say to respect everyone's privacy.
I read his book The Song of the Cell last year. It took me a long time to get through, but it was excellent. But it’s probably the last book I’ll be reading about cells for a good long while 🤓.
I respect your wish for privacy regarding your family moving forward. I wish you the best.
The fascinating text that pops up when I place my pointer over the illustration at top of article appears to be the description fed into the AI that generated it. An arresting image, and it’s interesting what the AI (presumably) selected to associate with “fractured identity,” etc. For example, the scientist appears to be wearing googly eyes gag glasses. Seems to me this image could just as easily illustrate psychosis or a 60s sci-fi novel.
Good catch! That prompt is actually what GPT-4 produced FROM my prompts in an interesting ouroboros of digital recursion. I originally included a shortened version of that as a caption but ultimately removed it to make it cleaner and save space. I'm surprised it retained that metadata as alt text. In any event, it makes for a cool Easter egg!
To get more into the weeds about that, it took quite a bit of wrestling to get GPT-4 to produce ANY image at all, and that was the best of them. I suspect that I kept hitting OpenAI copyright guardrails from name-dropping artists like Picasso and Dali, and anything related to sperm or reproduction likely set off censorious alarm bells no matter how much I explained the context.
It would be interesting to know what the AI had been feeding on. It not only reminds a little of old sci-fi novel covers that often had rather literal illustrations, very colorful, lurid, almost comic-like. Or classic album covers like the Beatles’ Revolver, with all the little Beatles swirling around as though out of the heads of the line-drawn Fab 4. Or my favorite, a Brian Eno cover that his girlfriend designed, a potpourri (literally) of objects that draws the viewer in:
Lovely, Eric -- and great questions about the ethics of these situations. As you say, it does seem like full transparency is the best policy with kids. Knowing our roots is important. It's why I turned to genealogy after leaving academia, searching for a deeper foundation for rebuilding my identity. I hope those conversations continue to unfold with openness and compassion in your family.
I also like your phrase "cellular kismet." It's so strange that many of us experience that even within our own families. During my own genealogical research, I discovered that DNA isn't split equally among one's children. For instance, my ex-wife's Italian genes might be overrepresented in one of our kids, whereas another child might have a disproportionate share of my Czech genes. There are probably limits to how deterministic those gene sets are -- how "baked-in" certain traits might be. But even as the biological child of my parents, I often experienced a kind of dysphoria, thinking I was breaking from family tradition by going to college. When I discovered that one of my great grandfathers had been a professor, I had an awakening similar to yours -- a homecoming to the self, you might say.
We're all hungry for answers to the mystery of self. I think this is why almost everyone who does an ancestry DNA analysis ends up saying "That explains a lot."
“Some people – you’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.” —Bob Dylan
Great comments, Josh. I agree with all of the above. It is definitely true many people feel out of place or like "black sheep" in their families and there is no obvious external or internal explanation. There are plenty of biological families where the kids are radically different from their parents anyway. I think one takeaway from my experience is that it isn't Nature OR Nurture, it's Nature AND Nurture; environment and choices still play a big role. People who think it is all or primarily one of those are kidding themselves.
You are definitely also right that genes, even the SNP markers that these companies use for ethnicity determination, are not mixed perfectly evenly in a 50/50 manner. That doesn't mean a parent who is 100% Japanese can have a child that is only 12% Japanese, but the percents can definitely be off a few points in either direction. Even in the large family my donor comes from, I've seen pictures of their siblings and while they are recognizably related, there are pretty wide differences in appearance (and likely also personality).
I’m 66 years old and 5 years ago I did my DNA test through 23 & me and also Ancestry. My cousin who also did hers ended up not being my cousin. But I found new cousins I had no idea about. So I contacted my new found cousin to find out how we were related. Very long story short, her mother was one of my mom’s friends in high school. Her mother had one sibling, a brother. I asked my mom about them and she acknowledged that she knew them. Then I told her that he was my father and she said she didn’t want to talk about it. So I contacted my new found dad and he denied it and acted like I was a scammer. So I gave up. I’m very close to my mom and she is 87 years old. I haven’t brought the subject up again since she said she didn’t want to talk about it.
I feel like an imposter in my family and looking back on my childhood with my mom, dad and older brother I remember always feeling like I didn’t fit in. My dad always favored my brother. My dad that raised me is gone now. He died before I found out. But the consequences of finding all of this out and my mom not wanting to tell me is very disorienting.
Thank you for sharing your story, my heart breaks for what you went through ❤️🩹🫂 The double-edged sword of this new technology and these tests is the possibility of completely up-ending one's family dynamics. They have a warning page about this before you submit, but realistically, most people skim that and never take seriously the possibility that there are secrets in their family that they were unaware of
That is intriguing that they are completely "banned" (I know you said people still get them). As hard as this has been at times, I 'm glad I know the information, it is a part of my identity and story. Preventing (or trying to, anyway) people from learning about their own genes and history seems like a bad idea.
Dear Eric, Thank you for this well-written and compelling story. I am part of a research team (led by Dr. Patricia Hershberger at the Univ of Michigan) developing a tool that parents who have used IVF can use to help in the process of disclosing origins to their child. Your story is very consistent with the research on adults who have not learned of their origins as adopted persons until adulthood -- known as "Late Discovery Adoptees" in the literature. They report feelings such as yours --- as if the floor had fallen out from underneath them, and, as you noted, their identity had been upended. Thanks for your writing; I have shared it with the other co-investigators on our team. If you want to discuss offline, my email is hgroteva@umass.edu. I am the director (emeritus) of the Rudd Adoption Research Program at UMass Amherst. It's important for stories such as yours to be shared.
Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment, Hal! I am glad to see research being done on the experience and long-term effects of adult DCP, especially those born in the "Wild West" era of the 1970s to early 90s, when secrecy predominated and there were virtually no standards of medical care. Most of the (very few) studies we have on the psychological impact are more recent and evaluate primarily cohorts of young children who were told between 5-10, and not surprisingly, those kids seem better adjusted. This is to say nothing of the health effects of DCP which are still largely unknown, but anecdotally there may be higher incidence of some conditions in this group. I'd be happy to contribute to this data in any way I can. I will follow-up with you offline to discuss ways we could further collaborate.
Thank you for sharing your story. I, too, am an NPE and the memoir I’ve written is all about this discovery, its aftermath, and the psychological underpinnings that complicated it all. I was struck by a word you used describing the moment if your discovery—vertigo. Dani Shapiro had that same experience. As do I…though my unmooring was lasting. It’s so hard to understand why something that “changes everything but changes nothing” can feel so destabilizing. I so relate to your experiences and am glad you kept pursuing in order to know the truth.
Absolutely, it feels like the floor dropped out from under you. I don't think recipient parents, donors, or fertility doctors mean to be callous, they just can't understand the experience emotionally, only intellectually from a distance.
Well, in my case it was an external affair. But still, no harm intended. You can read all about it here if you're interested. No pressure though, it might be re-traumatizing. :) https://unfixed.substack.com/p/available-chapters-of-unfixed
Thanks, I will check it out!
Great story Eric. I’m glad you were able to get some closure on your heritage.
WHOA, Eric. This is huge. Thank you for sharing your story, and with such compelling writing. The best word I can think to describe how this must feel (not knowing myself how it feels) is unmooring. I did 23andMe years ago too, and specifically chose not to identify potential relatives or be identified. We have some truly nutty distant cousins, but that’s all we know about. I really couldn’t bear to know anything more.
One of my four siblings - a brother - is a bit unhinged in very similar ways to my paternal uncle (my dad’s half brother), who lived next door to us growing up. There have long been jokes in my family that he was sired by my uncle. The funny thing is, this brother and I are the only two redheads out of the five of us. Might I have also been sired by my uncle? I can’t bear the thought and heft of all of this. I’m grateful to have my father’s cheekbones to anchor me into reality (or at least to my perceptions).
How are things now with your parents? And do you have any siblings with whom you were raised?
Thank you for the thoughtful reply! It is definitely a big decision whether or not to be open to matching. As my story shows, if you choose to cross that threshold there can be BIG revelations.
If you are interested in the subject from the science angle, Dr. Siddhartha Mukerjee's book "The Gene: An Intimate History" is a tour de force of 200 years of molecular biology, delicately interwoven with his own family's history of immigration, mental illness, and genetic diseases. Highly, highly recommend it.
As for my family, we're working to move forward, but that's all I'll say to respect everyone's privacy.
I read his book The Song of the Cell last year. It took me a long time to get through, but it was excellent. But it’s probably the last book I’ll be reading about cells for a good long while 🤓.
I respect your wish for privacy regarding your family moving forward. I wish you the best.
The fascinating text that pops up when I place my pointer over the illustration at top of article appears to be the description fed into the AI that generated it. An arresting image, and it’s interesting what the AI (presumably) selected to associate with “fractured identity,” etc. For example, the scientist appears to be wearing googly eyes gag glasses. Seems to me this image could just as easily illustrate psychosis or a 60s sci-fi novel.
Good catch! That prompt is actually what GPT-4 produced FROM my prompts in an interesting ouroboros of digital recursion. I originally included a shortened version of that as a caption but ultimately removed it to make it cleaner and save space. I'm surprised it retained that metadata as alt text. In any event, it makes for a cool Easter egg!
To get more into the weeds about that, it took quite a bit of wrestling to get GPT-4 to produce ANY image at all, and that was the best of them. I suspect that I kept hitting OpenAI copyright guardrails from name-dropping artists like Picasso and Dali, and anything related to sperm or reproduction likely set off censorious alarm bells no matter how much I explained the context.
It would be interesting to know what the AI had been feeding on. It not only reminds a little of old sci-fi novel covers that often had rather literal illustrations, very colorful, lurid, almost comic-like. Or classic album covers like the Beatles’ Revolver, with all the little Beatles swirling around as though out of the heads of the line-drawn Fab 4. Or my favorite, a Brian Eno cover that his girlfriend designed, a potpourri (literally) of objects that draws the viewer in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt3rKxRvmO4
Lovely, Eric -- and great questions about the ethics of these situations. As you say, it does seem like full transparency is the best policy with kids. Knowing our roots is important. It's why I turned to genealogy after leaving academia, searching for a deeper foundation for rebuilding my identity. I hope those conversations continue to unfold with openness and compassion in your family.
I also like your phrase "cellular kismet." It's so strange that many of us experience that even within our own families. During my own genealogical research, I discovered that DNA isn't split equally among one's children. For instance, my ex-wife's Italian genes might be overrepresented in one of our kids, whereas another child might have a disproportionate share of my Czech genes. There are probably limits to how deterministic those gene sets are -- how "baked-in" certain traits might be. But even as the biological child of my parents, I often experienced a kind of dysphoria, thinking I was breaking from family tradition by going to college. When I discovered that one of my great grandfathers had been a professor, I had an awakening similar to yours -- a homecoming to the self, you might say.
We're all hungry for answers to the mystery of self. I think this is why almost everyone who does an ancestry DNA analysis ends up saying "That explains a lot."
Thanks again for sharing your story!
“Some people – you’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.” —Bob Dylan
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-bob-dylan-rare-interview-2004/
Great comments, Josh. I agree with all of the above. It is definitely true many people feel out of place or like "black sheep" in their families and there is no obvious external or internal explanation. There are plenty of biological families where the kids are radically different from their parents anyway. I think one takeaway from my experience is that it isn't Nature OR Nurture, it's Nature AND Nurture; environment and choices still play a big role. People who think it is all or primarily one of those are kidding themselves.
You are definitely also right that genes, even the SNP markers that these companies use for ethnicity determination, are not mixed perfectly evenly in a 50/50 manner. That doesn't mean a parent who is 100% Japanese can have a child that is only 12% Japanese, but the percents can definitely be off a few points in either direction. Even in the large family my donor comes from, I've seen pictures of their siblings and while they are recognizably related, there are pretty wide differences in appearance (and likely also personality).
I’m 66 years old and 5 years ago I did my DNA test through 23 & me and also Ancestry. My cousin who also did hers ended up not being my cousin. But I found new cousins I had no idea about. So I contacted my new found cousin to find out how we were related. Very long story short, her mother was one of my mom’s friends in high school. Her mother had one sibling, a brother. I asked my mom about them and she acknowledged that she knew them. Then I told her that he was my father and she said she didn’t want to talk about it. So I contacted my new found dad and he denied it and acted like I was a scammer. So I gave up. I’m very close to my mom and she is 87 years old. I haven’t brought the subject up again since she said she didn’t want to talk about it.
I feel like an imposter in my family and looking back on my childhood with my mom, dad and older brother I remember always feeling like I didn’t fit in. My dad always favored my brother. My dad that raised me is gone now. He died before I found out. But the consequences of finding all of this out and my mom not wanting to tell me is very disorienting.
I loved reading your story. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing your story, my heart breaks for what you went through ❤️🩹🫂 The double-edged sword of this new technology and these tests is the possibility of completely up-ending one's family dynamics. They have a warning page about this before you submit, but realistically, most people skim that and never take seriously the possibility that there are secrets in their family that they were unaware of
That's very probably why DNA tests like 23andMe are banned in France (but with the internet of course it's very easy to get one anyway).
That is intriguing that they are completely "banned" (I know you said people still get them). As hard as this has been at times, I 'm glad I know the information, it is a part of my identity and story. Preventing (or trying to, anyway) people from learning about their own genes and history seems like a bad idea.
What an amazing story. I’m so glad you were able to talk with your parents about it and get it all into the open.
Absolutely, the first step is an frank and open discussion 🙏
Dear Eric, Thank you for this well-written and compelling story. I am part of a research team (led by Dr. Patricia Hershberger at the Univ of Michigan) developing a tool that parents who have used IVF can use to help in the process of disclosing origins to their child. Your story is very consistent with the research on adults who have not learned of their origins as adopted persons until adulthood -- known as "Late Discovery Adoptees" in the literature. They report feelings such as yours --- as if the floor had fallen out from underneath them, and, as you noted, their identity had been upended. Thanks for your writing; I have shared it with the other co-investigators on our team. If you want to discuss offline, my email is hgroteva@umass.edu. I am the director (emeritus) of the Rudd Adoption Research Program at UMass Amherst. It's important for stories such as yours to be shared.
Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment, Hal! I am glad to see research being done on the experience and long-term effects of adult DCP, especially those born in the "Wild West" era of the 1970s to early 90s, when secrecy predominated and there were virtually no standards of medical care. Most of the (very few) studies we have on the psychological impact are more recent and evaluate primarily cohorts of young children who were told between 5-10, and not surprisingly, those kids seem better adjusted. This is to say nothing of the health effects of DCP which are still largely unknown, but anecdotally there may be higher incidence of some conditions in this group. I'd be happy to contribute to this data in any way I can. I will follow-up with you offline to discuss ways we could further collaborate.
Beautifully written and very moving.
Beautifully written(as always) and I also think a very therapeutic way of venting your feelings!
Fascinating story, beautifully told.