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Joshua Doležal's avatar

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!

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Kimberly Warner's avatar

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.

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