So, where do I start?  Let’s go back to the beginning.  At 19 my mother had just had surgery, there was a 50% chance she wouldn’t make it.  She did.  And after, while recovering she told me she had something important to tell me about my father.  I said what, she said it has to do with when you were a baby.  Immediately I remember thinking, did they let something bad happen to me?  And then she said, your Dad is not your real Dad, we met when I was already pregnant with you and your Dad didn’t care, he wanted to get married and raise you as his.  And so that is what happened.  I never once questioned that my Dad wasn’t my Dad. 

It suddenly made a lot of sense, I am different than the rest of my family.  And my Dad always treated me differently too.  He was very tough on me, everything was about responsibilities, he was never that way with my two younger sisters.  I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t his real daughter or just the fact our family disintegrated over the years and so I benefited from some real parenting for a while.

Side note, my Dad knows I know, everyone does now, but we have never talked about it.  I don’t talk about it much at all.  I know my Dad loves me and when he talks about my accomplishments he cries.  And while he was far from the perfect Dad and loves Donald Trump, I love him because he was always been there for me, I never once in my life felt like I couldn’t count on him if I needed him. 

And so for years, I never bothered to look for or ask about my biological father.  He knew about me and he knew where to find me.  He didn’t and to me that felt like a slap in the face, so why should I bother.  Over the years, I always became depressed in the fall time, it took about 5 years for me to realize that my Mom told me about my Dad in September, and it made sense to me that I would feel sad during that time every year.  Knowing that made me feel better. 

I looked for my biological father a few times, I had some pieces of information that I thought I could google and find him, I couldn’t.  I even tasked one of my sisters to look for him and get more details from my Mom.  I could not bear talking to her about it.  I do better moving forward, not looking back.  We couldn’t find him and so I gave up.

After my son was born I felt this unbelievable hatred towards my biological father and my Mother if I am being honest.  The love I felt for my son was like nothing I had ever felt before.  And so when I looked into his eyes I couldn’t imagine for one minute missing any part of his life.  Did my biological father look into my eyes and not feel that?  He met me, he bought my crib, he was at my 1st birthday, that’s the last time he saw me.  And so again, I felt no need to look for him, until last month.

I got an email from a woman I follow talking about how she did a Meand23 DNA test and found a sibling which led to her bio Dad.  And I thought what the heck, I am doing it. I got the test, sent it in, got the results.   I didn’t have any close relatives just loads of cousins with a 1-2% DNA connection.  I did learn a lot of other cool stuff though.  I am not carrier for a lot of pretty serious diseases, that’s a relief.  It told me that I produce a protein that only 49% of people do, which makes me a great power athlete but a shitty long distance runner, which makes total sense if you know me.  It also said that I do not sleep deeply and I am restless sleeper, moving up to 16 times an hour, this is spot on by the way.

While the DNA test was cool, I started wondering if I should look for my biological father again.  And so after two hours of googling, I had nothing.  And then I thought why don’t I use Bing, I hate Bing by the way, google girl all the way.  And I freaking found him, using Bing.  I found his obituary that is.  He died in November of 2016.  And so there I was reading it and getting goosebumps because it all lined up and I knew it was him.  And I felt empty and sad and angry.  And also not as alone.  He was an engineer, and had his master’s degree and owned his own company.  I’m an accountant, have a master’s degree and own my own company.

I always say “no regrets”, its why I started my fitness business even though I spent the last 18 years building a successful accounting career.  I truly feel regret not having found him sooner.  I wonder how I will feel next fall.