Things That Have Happened in the Last Year

I didn't realize it had been nearly a year since my last post.  Between then and now I've met my paternal half-brother Hans and his wife and young son.  I rejoined Facebook after a 2+ year hiatus, reconnecting me with my paternal half-sister Simone, the paternal first cousin once removed who orchestrated the Von Trapp family reunion, and my various maternal relations who I only ever communicate with on there.  Apparently no one was avoiding me; they just don't bother replying to emails.

No new half-siblings, leaving the donor conceived sibling count at zero.  No new word from my adoptive brother Dante or any other family.  I haven't heard from Dante since 2017 after I wired him our dad's life insurance payout.  I thought he might've friended our cousins on Facebook since he'd said when Dad died that he wanted to get back in touch with them, but the only thing I can see that he he has done on Facebook since then is join a group from our hometown, get into some internet fights with locals, get banned from the group, and then post that he has no idea why he was banned and they're all just too cliquey.  Now that's the Dante I remember.

No new word from my biological father.  No direct communication since he asked me not to contact him again after receiving my letter in 2014.

I can't remember if I wrote about discovering on Newspapers.com that my dad's father had another family and a well documented criminal record (thank you, Fresno Bee) before he moved back to the Midwest and married Grandma.  And thus my dad had a secret half-brother he may or may not have known about.  I emailed Dante about it but got no response.  The half-brother died a few years before my dad did and had no known biological children.  He had been named after my grandpa, but his stepfather had adopted him when he was little and given him a new surname.  I'd like to ask my dad's brother and sister if they knew about the secret half-brother, but I haven't seen my uncle since Dad's funeral or my aunt since my wedding over a decade ago.  I could probably count on my hands the number of times I've talked to them in my life, so reaching out for this would be more awkward than I'm willing to do.

My mom's suspected half-sister's daughter took a DNA test, confirming my grandpa was, in fact, her grandfather too.  I thought I'd written about my mom's secret half-sister/cousin, but I can't find it anywhere but here.  My cousin Michelle and I had started to doubt the veracity of the claim that Grandpa had fathered Ruby shortly before Ruby's mother had married his half-brother.  It was the big family "secret" all the cousins knew.  Ruby's daughter showed up as a first cousin match for me on 23andMe though, which is way too close a match for us to be half-second cousins (we share more than triple the DNA I share with my known half-second cousins on AncestryDNA -- the ones who should be her first cousins but aren't), so I know for sure now that we're actually half-first cousins.  We chatted on 23andMe a bit.  She asked after my (our) remaining uncle, Eugene, who neither of us has heard from in years.  I assume she knows as well as any of us who her grandfather is, but since I'd never talked to her or her mother (my half-aunt) before in my life and I don't know how their branch of the family feels about any of this, we never got onto the topic of biological grandfathers.  I wish I knew a polite and inoffensive way to say, "I've seen some wonky shit on here and I'm comfortable talking about anything you want to talk about.  You won't upend my world; I just don't want to upend yours either."

Free Sperm Donor!

FFS.  Ran across this today in one of the free sperm donor groups where I lurk.  While this one is comically gross, it isn't necessarily un-representative of the genre of sperm donor posts. 

In case you're new, "NI" stands for "natural insemination" a.k.a. sexual intercourse.  This particular gentleman only does NI (a.k.a. you must pay for his sperm by having sex with him).  Some of the group members will only do NI, while others merely prefer it.  (To be fair, a few don't advertise sex at all.) 

I just needed to share this somewhere and there's nowhere really appropriate I can think of.  It was too ridiculous to keep to myself. 

How I Want My Sperm Donor Father Informed of My Death

This is part two of my "When I Die" instructions.  Part one is here.  I had an idea recently.  I'm not sure if I actually want this done or not, but in case I decide in this plan's favor, here are the detailed instructions.  If I die before I can decide, I leave the decision making up to my BFF Jerry and her superior sense of mischief.

I have some feelings about the fact that my biological father will probably never speak to me in my lifetime.  I wrote to him, and he wrote back asking me never to contact him again, and that's where we are.  Probably forever.  Other donor conceived people have explained how they wore down their biological families with patience and kindness and regularly scheduled holiday cards, but I can't fathom having the guts to reach out to him a second time after he expressly asked me never to contact him again.

If I die before he does, I would like a large box (large enough I could fit inside it if I wrapped my arms around my knees and ducked my head) shipped to him.  Ideally at the hospital where he works, signature required.  It should be filled with helium balloons so that they rise up out of the box unexpectedly when it is opened.  There should also be an expensive, high end note card in an envelope at the bottom of the box.  The note should read as follows:

Surprise!  

If you are reading this card, it means I am dead. 
Since news of my existence did not seem to bring you any pleasure, hopefully news of my newly minted lack of existence brings you some relief. 
I complied with with your wish never to hear from me again in the hope I might someday hear from you.  You went my entire life without speaking to me.  

Congratulations!  You did it!

Each balloon should also contain at least two tablespoons of glitter so that, if someone pops them (ideally in a fit of rage or shame), they get an extra surprise.

The note card should probably also have my name followed by the parenthetical "(your biological daughter)" on it somewhere just in case he doesn't know who it's from.

My Letter to the Sperm Donor's Wife

I mentioned in my last post encountering a man on the internet who I am concerned is keeping his wife in the dark about the fact that he donates sperm.  So I'm sending her a letter.  The way I see it, this might upset her because he told the truth and she wants to pretend this isn't happening (this was how it seems to have gone down with my biological father's wife -- she knew he was donating, but the fact that no one would ever know or have to answer for it was crucial), or she has no idea he already has seven DC kids and she'll be blindsided.  Either way, I figure a letter will make her more capable of making informed decisions for herself going forward.  If I didn't tell her, I think the outcome would likely be even worse because, when your husband is impregnating women across the continental US, you don't have to know it is happening for it to become your problem.  If you have notes for me on what to add or remove, I'll happily take them.  Here is my first draft:

Dear Emily,

I am writing to you because I have some personal information I wanted to make sure you were aware of.  Your husband, Aaron, has been donating sperm to women he finds online.  He says on his sperm donor profile that his wife is aware of his activities and only asks that he be discreet, and but this sounded like a lie, so I wanted to make sure you did indeed know what was going on.  This is something that will affect you too, no matter how quiet it is kept.  I have included screenshots of his sperm donor profiles that you can look up online.  You will notice he has been using photos of himself with your daughter to advertise his services.  I would advise against this for the sake of her privacy. 

Aaron’s Known Donor Registry profile says he currently has seven children in addition to your daughter.  His profile says he is willing to be in contact with his offspring after the age of 18.  Some will reach out to him.  Some might reach out sooner than that.  And some will want to know your daughter too.  If she doesn’t already know that she has seven half-siblings, now would be a good time to tell her.  The truth will come out eventually, and it will only come as more of a shock the older she is when she finds out. 

I hope when the other children reach out that you are okay with them being in contact.  If you didn’t know about Aaron’s donations and the other children until now, I can only imagine how upsetting this must be.  But please know this wasn’t something the children made happen, and your daughter might also want to know them.  They are her half-brothers and -sisters after all.

Aaron posted on Facebook the other day that you’re in the market for an egg donor and surrogate, or traditional surrogate.  If this is true, I do not think it is a good idea, but I wish you well.  If anything I’ve written has been news to you, please have a conversation with Aaron.  His choices affect you too, and donating sperm isn’t something that’s just about him and his body.  There are seven new people in existence and even more who have been or will be affected by this choice, and you and your family are a part of that. 

I don’t know you or your husband.  I have never met your husband.  I wanted to write to you because I’ve been in a similar situation involving a sperm donor and mothers and children, and people suffered when what the various adults and children wanted didn’t match up.  I empathize with your situation, and I know how complicated this can be.  I wanted to make sure you had as much information as possible since this is something that will affect you whether you knew about it or not.

Here is a list of websites and Aaron’s user names if you’d like to look up a bit more information:

knowndonorregistry.com – REDACTED

vivasperm.com – REDACTED

donorpride.com – REDACTED

His Known Donor Registry profile also describes how to find his Facebook page.  He uses the name REDACTED.  

Tips for Keeping Your Sperm Donations Secret

Step 1:  STOP DOING IT!  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU'RE GOING TO GET CAUGHT!

A few months ago I crossed paths on Facebook with one of the many, many men who advertise online to donate their sperm to strangers.  He said he was married and had a daughter.  He said his wife knew he donates sperm and is okay with it but wants him to keep it discreet.  He used a very common fake name, as well as photographs of other people instead of his own.  He used a fake birthday, fake age, and fake place of employment.  He seemed to use his sperm donor user names exclusively on sperm donor websites.  This guy knew what he was doing.

He posted on a lot of sperm donor websites though, and little bits of information started to come out.  For one thing, he uses photos of himself with his daughter on some of the sites.  There are several photos – too many of them both to be stock photos -- and it seems like the people who had actually met him for sperm might say something if they weren’t him.  Reverse Google image search unfortunately yielded nothing. 

On another site he listed an actual small town name for his location instead of the local metropolitan area like he had on all the others.  Someone who had availed him of his services for “natural insemination” (sexual intercourse) gave him a glowing online review that called him by a different and presumably real first name.  Other ladies told him happy birthday on Facebook when his account said it was still months away. 

That’s still not a lot of information for a person to go on.  But apparently it’s enough for Google.  I had been entering everything I knew about him – first name, date of birth, town, user names – and it finally yielded the MyLife listing for someone with his first name, date of birth, and small town.  Maybe he used his sperm donor user names or email alongside his actual name too; I’m not sure.  I looked up the full name MyLife listed and suddenly I was looking at the man from the photos with his daughter.  Suddenly I was looking at his wedding announcement, his wife’s Facebook page, his Pinterest, his LinkedIn, his father’s YouTube page.  He had deleted most of his social media accounts that weren’t about donating sperm under fake names, but it didn’t matter.

I wonder if his wife really knows about his donations.  And if so, I wonder how she feels about it.  I wonder if his 5-year-old daughter knows about her half-siblings yet.  She already has seven according to the sperm donor profile with her sweet little girl face all over it. 

Stop Posting Secrets You Wish to Keep

If you aren’t telling your donor conceived child they are donor conceived, please consider not telling strangers on the internet either.  If you post – even in a private Facebook group -- are you posting under your own name?  If so, everyone in there knows who you are.  Anyone can look up who your children are and where you live and where you work and where your kids go to school.  A woman just posted in a private 5000 person (!) Facebook group a photo of her donor conceived son side by side with his half-sibling and stated that he is currently unaware the other boy is his brother.  He doesn't even know that he is donor conceived.  She plans to tell him but doesn’t know when.  I'm not sure what backstory she gave him for who his brother was and why they traveled 3000 miles to meet him.

A quick Google search later and I know her son’s full name, date of birth, home address, where he goes to school, and what grade he is in.  He's a minor with no social media accounts.  

Now, I’m not going to do anything with this information.  The only thing I would gain by contacting family members (whose contact information is all too easy to find) would be the ability to brag about how good I am at looking things up on the internet, which is clearly what I'm already doing here.  But PLEASE reconsider posting online about secrets you wish to keep.  I'm not the only person on the internet.  

Let’s say you’ve learned your lesson and have started posting under a pseudonym.  Did you keep the same Facebook account and just change how the name appears?  Are you posting under an alias or username you have used on other sites?  Is your account linked to an email address that is in your name?  Or to an email address that you’ve used on another account that is linked to your name?  If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then everything you post is being linked back to your name.  And not in a fancy only-NSA-and-Zuckerberg-will-know-who-I-am way but in a randos-can-look-me-up-on-pipl way.  The woman I mentioned above uses the same username for Facebook, Pinterest, TripAdvisor and travel forums, her defunct blog and Twitter accounts, and – drum roll please -- multiple donor/sibling websites.  

If her son ever does a Google search on his mother, the fact that he is donor conceived will be one of the first things he learns.  He is already nearly 13.

I’m really not sure what my goal is in writing this post.  I don’t actually want parents to get better at keeping secrets from their children.  I want them to realize that they CAN’T keep secrets from their children.  They suck at it.  Even if they don’t post about it online, they probably confided in someone.  Even in they didn’t, they might announce it themselves in a fit of something.  Or it’ll come out with a DNA test.  Please tell your kids who their biological parents are.  They’ll find out regardless, and it’s in their best interest for it to come from someone who has their best interests at heart.  And it's in your best interest for them to continue thinking they can trust you.  

[UPDATE] Cousin Planning the Family Reunion Reaches Out

I responded, and she responded, and then I responded, and she responded again, and SHE'S NICE.

So far Pam Von Trapp has offered to tell me family stories and talk to my paternal uncles for me since I mentioned not having had the guts to reach out to them.  I'm very happy with how this has gone so far. 

Thanks go to my BFF Jerry for helping me draft my initial response. 

Cousin Planning the Family Reunion Reaches Out

Two close relations from the Von Trapp family (my sperm donor biological father's family) recently joined AncestryDNA.  I recognized them from my half-brother Hans' Facebook.  One of them is the woman planning the big family reunion that I'm slightly desperate to be personally invited to, even though no one is being personally invited because EVERY VON TRAPP IS INVITED and I would also probably be too chicken to go.  I can't imagine I'd enjoy it.  I just want the story.  I also like the idea of laying claim to my biological father's unwanted extended family.

Anyway, the cousin planning the reunion sent me the following message on Ancestry tonight:

Hello! Youre one of my cousins, but Im not exactly sure which one!

Hello! I know you're one of my Uncle Jack's granddaughters, but I don't know if you're Joseph's daughter or Andy's daughter... I hope this isn't an intrusion, but I'd love to know who you are! Thanks so much.

Pam Von Trapp (daughter of Bob, Jack's younger brother)

I had been dreaming of such an opportunity.  Two of my three paternal uncles are already on AncestryDNA, and neither has ever reached out to me because they went to Joseph instead, which was reasonable but leaves me wondering if they avoid messaging me now out of respect for my privacy or because they want nothing to do with me.  I want to be in touch, but how would they respond?  I am too afraid to ask.

Pam is my first DNA match who knows Joseph and isn't in the loop on who I am.  How do I respond so that I neither cast myself as an immediate, permanent outsider nor offend her by assuming too much?  Is admitting I'm his daughter offensive?  He donated sperm anonymously! That doesn't make you his DAUGHTER!  People have strong feelings about the semantics of sperm donation and family.

I think I have to acknowledge that I'm donor conceived.  I can't tell if she's hinting she knows I'm someone new.  So much of the family doesn't communicate that she might not even know my half-sister Simone's name.  She might think I'm her.  I also want to make my introduction as little about Joseph as possible, though that makes it harder to word than "Joseph donated sperm while at medical school."  I want her to know that my half-siblings acknowledge me so she knows she wouldn't have to be some sort of trailblazer to speak to me too.  Joseph is the only person I've reached out to who has flat out rejected me, but I'm afraid it'll happen again.  I don't like being different.  I just want to be accepted.  This sounds really whiny, but it is what it is. 

tl;dr: I worry too much about things that don't really matter.  And I crave the love and acceptance of people I may or may not like were I to actually meet them.

Searching for a Published Family Tale

When I first DNA tested, when I started deducing the identity of my biological father, I found a man with whom I had so much in common I thought he might be my father.  Spoiler alert:  he isn't, but he did turn out to be my uncle.  I heard recently that he published something he wrote about his mentally unstable mother (so I think writing tell-alls about our mothers might be a genetically heritable trait?).  I hear it was deeply personal and possibly scathing, at least based on its family reception.  I want to find this piece of writing about my grandmother and the house where my father grew up, but I cannot. 

I don't know anyone who will tell me what it's titled or where or how it was published.  I don't know if it was a book or a magazine article or when it came out, but it was allegedly published.  My uncle is a prolific author who has published dozens of books and articles, but I can't find one that claims to be a memoir or a personal story.  His CV and his Google and Amazon author pages center on his career-related non-fiction writing, and none of them list everything.  None of them seem to list the articles at all.

I don't want to ask him personally partly because I don't think he'd tell me.  I have literally never contacted him, I'm not entirely sure he knows who I am, and I just don't like asking strangers for things when I can skulk about on the web hoping to uncover secrets myself instead.  My sister didn't know any helpful details and assured me our father wouldn't give up the information if she asked.  She feels sure he wouldn't want me to read it.  Any suggestions on where to find this story?  I'm betting it was an essay and not a full book... 

Small Update

I haven’t posted in a long time.  I’ve been feeling sad.  I’m okay and still functioning at a fairly normal level, but I’ve been having feelings I’d rather not feel.

I met my sister.  That was fine.  Apparently her parents even knew we were spending the weekend together.  My biological father apparently told her to tell me “hi” from him, which almost made me cry because I’d assumed he hated me for writing him a letter three years ago, introducing myself and subsequently upsetting his wife.  He still stays away, but it doesn’t sound like he hates me.  His wife still does though.  Because I wrote a letter once three years ago.  “Maybe when ten years have passed and she sees that her life hasn’t changed at all, she’ll be okay with it,” I told my sister.  But if she’s still mad after three years, I can’t imagine another seven will help.  I also can’t imagine him choosing to talk to me when it would upset his wife further and NOT talking to me only upsets me in my house where I cry in my shower alone.

A lot has happened this year.  I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it all.  I don’t even know where to start. 

Last night my daughter said about the fact that I don’t speak to my mother, “It’s not too late to make the right choice.”  I tried to explain, “This is the right choice.”  She’s never met my mother, only seen pictures.  My mother has required full time care on account of her crippling mental illness and prescription drug addiction for more than twice as long as my daughter has been alive.  Dante said she doesn’t really speak anymore, presumably for the same reasons, and no one else in the family can bear to deal with her anymore.  I don’t think I’m in the wrong here.  I thought my daughter understood when I explained that my mother has a disease that makes her say and do mean things, and she refuses to be treated for the disease. 

I don’t know what to tell her.  My mother is the only person I’ve ever actively cut from my life (my dad was a passive removal – I just stopped initiating everything – same with Dante honestly), and it was really hard and I was sooooo suicidal every time she’d call me to yell at me.  I lived in fear of the phone ringing, and I cried all the time and had trouble functioning.  How do you explain that to a 5-year-old?  Every day she tells me she loves me and asks me to marry her.  I don’t want to tell her how bad things can get with a mother.  I don’t want her to live in fear that things with us will turn out the same way.

Meeting My Sister for the First Time

I'm hesitant to write about this because, as largely unread as this blog is, it's not private.  My nearest and dearest are well aware of it, though they aren't interested enough to come here (they hear enough of this stuff in person), and I should assume any up-and-coming nearest and dearest will be clued into it too, which is why I don't talk much about my paternal half-siblings.  I want them to like me, even if they someday read my blog.

To recap, I was conceived with anonymous donor sperm.  The only half-siblings I've found so far are the two adult children my biological father raised with his wife.  I'm the only DC one I know of, though there are probably more.

When I found Joseph, my biological father, he seemed very concerned that I would out him publicly, tag his children in Facebook posts, or somehow stalk or inconvenience his family.  I forgive him for this because he doesn't know that's not my style (except for the stalking -- I'm an exceptionally quiet cyberstalker).  He didn't want to know me, but my half-siblings did.  I have spoken to my half-sister Simone once on the phone.  We text sometimes on holidays.  We're Facebook friends, as I am with my half-brother Hans.  It's a strange relationship.  I've always been afraid of being perceived as too forward or forcing myself on them.  Both have been welcoming and kind to me.  Neither have seemed particularly interested in me though, so I've tried to take their lead.  Our relationships cooled, which I think was actually a good thing because they feel more solid now.  I feel more vested.  I feel like I would have to make a misstep for them to strike me from their lives now, whereas I previously checked Facebook every day to see if they had spontaneously unfriended me yet.

Here's the point of this post.  Simone wants to visit me and stay in my house.  Right away.  I do not want this to happen.  I would like to meet her.  I would like to share a meal and talk for hours, maybe even spend the day together.  She is my sister, and she will be forever, no matter how this relationship plays out.  But we have never met in person, we've only spoken once, and I don't want to host her in my home.  I am self-conscious of my home, and I have a husband and child and dog to take care of in my home.  I want to be able to give Simone my undivided attention somewhere else.  I want to be able to decompress after we meet and be alone to process everything.  I declined her request.  I said maybe in a few months.  Want to set a date in a few months?  Maybe then I'd have time to get to know her enough I could handle it, though I didn't say that part.  She asked again.  It needed to be now.  To avoid saying no again -- but also avoid saying yes -- I asked what was going on and expressed concern.  I knew she had had a fight with her boyfriend.  I knew to a certain extent what this was all about because she posts a lot of information on Facebook, which I appreciate as a quiet cyberstalker.  We messaged back a forth and few times over the next couple of weeks.  Then she asked again if she could stay in my house.  I've gotten good at drawing boundaries over the years, but I never learned how to maintain a relationship with someone who might not want those boundaries in place.  At the advice of my best friend Jerry, who is good at complex interpersonal relationships, I did what Simone frequently does and didn't respond at all.  The next time we talk, I will -- like Simone frequently does -- pretend it never happened.  This might sound cold, but I think it's the kindest way I could handle this particular situation.  It's strange.  I feel like I'm relearning how to play a game I was never particularly good at.

In case you're reading this ever, Simone, I do want to know you.  You are interesting, and we have so much in common in spite of all the ways we're different.  I think we'd both enjoy taking absurd numbers of selfies together and posting them on social media for attention with various #sister tags.  I like you and want to know you better.  But I want to take things slow.  I know it's been over two years, but we've barely spoken in that time, let alone bonded.  I am afraid of being the rebound from your current relationship.  I am afraid the novelty of meeting a new sister and posting selfies together on Facebook will not be enough to make you feel better again and that you might end up upset or mad at me.  I can be a good friend, but we barely know each other, and I'm not the best person for this job.  We could talk over the phone, and I could listen and sympathize, but I'm not good at hosting guests.  I don't like doing it, and that's not about you.  I want to get to know you, but if I let you light a fire under this sister relationship, I am afraid it will explode.  You mentioned starting DBT once on Facebook.  I clicked "like."  It made me happy that you were getting the kind of therapy I had always thought would work best for you.  I wanted to express support in that small Facebook way.  You don't know that borderline personality disorder is one of my areas of expertise.  You don't know anything about the family that raised me (well, you might now, if you're reading this here).  I want to have a functional relationship with you, so I'm not letting this go too fast.  Maybe I could come visit you and stay in a hotel.  We could go out to eat and you could show me around.  This is the best I can do.

Coming Out as Donor Conceived

I've been considering something for awhile.  I've been considering coming out on Facebook as donor conceived.  It isn't a secret among my nearest and dearest, and I don't keep it a secret at all anymore really, but it's something most people don't know about me.  Almost none of my family or my high school friends know I'm donor conceived, and those two groups make up a significant portion of my social media "friends."

The reason I'm considering coming out is that I want to push people from my hometown to take DNA tests and I was hoping this might be attention grabbing enough to... get their attention.  I was conceived locally with fresh sperm from a local donor.  I already accidentally found a paternal second cousin who is a friend of a friend.  Any DC half-siblings I might have were (I am 95% certain) conceived at the same hospital as me, and I'm not from a big city.  They were also (again, I'm 95% certain) conceived around the same time as me.  We might have even gone to school together.

I will never know if I've found all my DC half-siblings.  There is no way for me to know for sure.  But I feel pretty certain that there is at least one out there somewhere, and odds are good that s/he and I know some of the same people.

I was thinking of doing one of those videos where the person holds up poster boards of text like the bad friend does to Keira Knightley on Love Actually.  Those seem popular for getting people's attention.  Here is what I'm thinking of writing on them:

"Hi, I'm Christina.  

You might know me from Smalltown High School.  

What you might NOT know is

We might be related.

I was conceived with sperm from an anonymous donor.

The doctor said not to tell anyone, including me.  

An estimated 90% of people don't know they are donor conceived.

DNA testing through AncestryDNA or 23andMe can tell you if you're one of them.

It will also tell you if you're my sibling.

I don't know how many half-siblings I might have.

But I hope to meet them someday."

I'd like to hear your thoughts, both on this whole idea and on what words to use if I were to do it.  Has anyone else done something along these lines or with this goal in mind?

Books Intended for DC Adults

There are quite a few children's books on the market geared toward telling your preschooler that s/he was conceived via donor egg or sperm, but I can't seem to find a book intended for the masses who learn they're donor conceived somewhere between adolescence and death.  Isn't that odd? 

I don't collect a lot of things, but in the last few years I have found myself collecting the few books on donor conception that take into account the perspectives of DC adults.  I only own them because my library doesn't carry them and they're typically old and sometimes out of print.  Lethal Secrets is a good one.  I'm reading Experiences of Donor Conception now, which has different sections focusing on the major players in the DC Trifecta (donors, intended parents, and offspring).  AnonymousUs has a lot of first person stories from the Trifecta too, and Alana edited together a "best of" sort of book from the site, so there's that.  But I think there should be a "how to" book, with sections on "so you just found out," and "tips for coping," and "how to search, if that's something you might be into," as well as "other resources." 

Such a book would be beneficial not only for DC offspring but also for any parents who want to tell them but think it might be too late when they reach out for resources and the closest thing they come across is The Pea That Was Me.

If you know of a book intended for DC teens and adults who are just now finding out they're donor conceived, please let me know.  And if you don't know of such a book but have ideas about what else it should contain, please let me know that too.  If there really is a void on the topic, I'd like to put something together and put it up on Amazon, even if the primary thing it says is,  

"Your feelings are valid, 
you're going to be okay, 
and you are not alone." 

I've found too many bewildered, newly discovered DC people reaching out for support on unrelated and tangentially related forums (I'm looking at you, most of Reddit) and, instead of empathy or validation, they get hammered with "you should be grateful to be alive" and "but you were WANTED" and "it doesn't CHANGE anything" and "think of the donor's PRIVACY!"  There has to be a better way.

My Piece on the AnonymousUs Podcast

I wrote a piece about my sister a couple of weeks ago for AnonymousUs.org (and posted it here too because I crave attention and recognition), and Hattie Hart did a very nice reading of it for their podcast this week.  Mine is the last of the three stories, starting at the 5:45 point.  (Thank you, Hattie!)

My Sister

My half-sister Simone texted me over the weekend and it got me thinking.  I wrote the following to submit to AnonymousUs:


When I first found my biological father and his family through DNA testing, I found my only known half-sister.  Our father told her about me at my request.  She was in shock.  "I always wanted a sister," she told me.  "I can't believe I've had one all this time and didn't even know."  I knew how she felt.  We'd both grown up with only brothers.      

My sister and I look a lot alike:  same pale skin, same hair, same eyes, same jaw.  We like a lot of the same things:  hiking, baking, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  We're both half German, though only she grew up learning the language, and only she feels a connection to the culture.  And there are even more things we don't have in common -- the way we dress, the books we read, the music we like.

We've never met.  I was in kindergarten when my sister was born and moved a thousand miles away.  It was another 25 years before we learned of each other's existence.  We've texted, Facebooked, talked on the phone -- tentative efforts to become "real sisters" like ones who've grown up together.  Her parents don't approve, but we're adults and it's out of their hands now.  My mother forbade me from ever seeking out my biological father's family too.  "He was just 'a donor,'" she told me.  "It's different."  Still, even if you believe family is only who you choose to include, my siblings and I have chosen to include one another.  As far as they're concerned, I count.  I feel like their opinions on this matter hold more weight than mine since they aren't donor conceived like me. 

Families aren't exclusively made up of intended parents and the children they choose to raise.  That's a family, sure, but sometimes children -- certainly donor conceived and adopted children -- have additional family beyond the ones who raised them.  Sometimes family means shared blood in two people who look alike but grew up apart.  Sometimes two strangers are family simply because they are sisters.  I don't think it's as "different" as my mother believed.

DC Pride

There is a thread right now about what makes us proud or happy about being donor conceived.  This is my sincere and unsarcastic reply:

On Not Fitting In

I watched a documentary on Amazon Streaming the other day (free with Prime) called "Adopted."  It follows two different stories:  an adult Korean-born woman who was adopted into a white American family at the age of 4 months, and a white American couple in the process of adopting a baby girl from China.

I like reading blogs and watching documentaries that feature adoptees.  While my brother Dante is the only adoptee I've been close to, we were never close enough to talk about it.  I knew almost nothing about adoption before I found my biological father.  What I think interests me most about adoption -- or, more accurately, adoptees -- is that, while it's distinctly different from my donor conception, a lot of adoptees and donor conceived people seem to share a lot of the same feelings of genetic bewilderment, wanting to know where they came from, and wanting people to stop telling them they should be grateful to be alive. 

I know a fair number of donor conceived people who feel adoption is different primarily because the children exist before the "intended parents" find them, unlike in donor conception, but the more I read, the more I believe children (and often mothers) are commodified in adoption just like in donor conception.  Most adopted children are not actually "saved" from some unspeakable fate (though some people like my mother like to tell them they were).  The bigger difference, as far as I can see, is not between intent but between how many biological ties are broken at birth, and in some cases of donor conception and surrogacy, all biological ties are broken just as in a typical adoption.  Lines start to blur.  We have a lot in common.  There are very few blogs by donor conceived people that have been updated in recent years, so I read adoptee blogs and breathe a sigh of relief that someone else gets it.  Someone more daring than me is blogging the outrage I'm afraid to show.

I enjoyed the "Adopted" documentary.  I don't share much in common with Jennifer, the Korean-American adoptee, but I related to her.  She grew up with white parents who had been raised "not to see race" and refused to recognize that she was any different from them, as well as classmates who mocked her for her physically Asian qualities.  As I've heard many transracial adoptees say, she felt white.  She wanted her outsides to match her insides.  She wanted blue eyes and blond hair and felt somewhat bewildered looking into the mirror as she grew up.  As a white donor-conceived woman who has experienced this phenomenon -- aspects of my face and body looking "off" because I can't place them in the context of my family, long before I knew this was a phenomenon that existed -- I can only imagine how Jennifer must have felt.  As she got older and attended a high school where she wasn't the only Asian student, she tried to pass as a "real Asian" since her new friends wouldn't immediately know she hadn't been raised in an Asian family.  When she reached adulthood, she even moved to Korea for a time, but still she did not fit in.  In Korea, where she'd been born, she was too American.

My best friend Jerry and I were talking about "Adopted" when she mentioned the fact that no one ever feels like they fit in -- that the very idea of fitting in is a fantasy that only makes people sad, like finding the meaning of life or finding one's soulmate.  While I agree with her to a certain extent, I think there are different levels of Not Fitting In that we experience.  I don't feel like I fit in most places or with most people -- I think I'm pretty common in this -- but I've got this Great White Halloween Costume I wear everyday that usually makes it look like I do.  I think my problem is less serious in part simply because it's less visible.  I don't expect everyone with "costumes" like mine to feel that way, but blending in has always meant a lot to me.  I've been in situations in which I stood out uncomfortably because of my race, and I've been in situations (most situations) in which I blended, and having the option to blend in simply by changing my clothes or hair or behavior -- whether or not I feel like I fit in -- makes a pretty huge difference.  This is only one of the struggles facing transracial adoptees, and it didn't even occur to me it existed until I started reading blogs in which people talk about it.

A lot of parents take their children's life challenges as personal insults.  As a parent, I get that.  It's annoying though, both for parent and child.  It makes parents defensive and children either angry or overprotective of their parents' feelings or both.  It creates an unhelpful barrier to communication.  Jennifer wanted validation from her adoptive parents, who she loved and cherished and cared for both physically and financially, but they seemed to treat her problems as a transracial and transnational adoptee as made up problems she'd invented to garner attention and pity.  What did she want them to do about it now?  They'd done the best they could.  They'd been raised not to see race and they never saw her as any different from them.  How could she ask for any more than that?  And these were good parents.  Loving, adoptive parents. 

I got the impression what might have helped was if they'd recognized that any daughter who loved them and cared for them as much as theirs always had was not baring her soul to hurt them.  She loved her parents and wanted to feel seen by them in her entirety.  She wanted them to understand and love her for all of who she was, and that included being Korean and an adoptee and not just a chameleon who could and would change who she was to gain their approval.  I get that.  I'm a chameleon too.  I think it might have meant a lot if they'd said, "I had no idea.  I'm sorry you've felt so much pain.  I did the best I could, and it's hard to hear you felt this way, but I understand that you didn't have the words to express these feelings earlier.  Thank you for trusting me with this now.  I've always loved you as my daughter, and it didn't occur to me that you might still feel adopted or want to know about where you came from.  Is there anything I can do to help?"  Empathy is important.  Validation is 50% of every cure. 

Genetic Counseling for the Donor Conceived

I'm getting to the point where I'm posting enough stuff my half-siblings know that, if they stumbled across this blog for whatever reason, they would be able to identify me.  This makes me nervous, but not nervous enough to stop posting.  Obviously.

My half-brother Hans emailed me the other day to say our uncle had tested positive for some sort of mutation that puts people at higher risk for specific types of cancer.  He said our father had asked him to let me know in case I wanted to get myself or my daughter tested.  Below Hans' note was a series of emails between my biological father and my uncle's wife.  She had the job of informing my uncle's family members that they might want to get tested.  There was a limited amount of information exchanged.  The emails were from several months ago, but the dates showed my biological father just had forwarded them to Hans to forward to me this week.  It reminded me vaguely of how people who find out they have an STD are supposed to reach out to everyone they've been intimate with.  "Hey, it's Joseph.  Yeah, the Joseph who sired you about 30 years ago.  Good times, huh?  So anyway, I tested positive, and it turns out you might want to get yourself tested too..."  I wish I had more known half-siblings, just to add to the comic effect.

I had a check up scheduled with my doctor for just a few days later, so I brought a print-out of the email chain to my appointment and asked my doctor what he thought of genetic testing.  I'd assumed he would say there wasn't much point in it if I'm not planning to have more kids and there is nothing actionable I can do with the results anyway.  When I'd brought up prenatal testing before conceiving my daughter, my OB/GYN at the time had said, "What for?  If you don't even know your family medical history, how can we know what tests to run?"  I hadn't known who my biological father was back then or anything about his family medical history, but I thought there were standard tests doctors could run for common disorders. 

To my surprise, maybe because I have more family information now, my current doctor had a different reaction.  He referred me to a local cancer center that does genetic counseling and strongly recommended I do it.  He said that, while there isn't often something actionable to be done with a heightened cancer risk, there might be more screening options in the future, and the field of genetics is progressing constantly so it would be good to have my results on file.

I called the genetic counselor to make an appointment.  She asked me if I had a copy of my uncle's report because there was relevant information in it that they could use in testing me.  I told her I might be able to get a copy.  She stressed the importance of it until I finally explained that my biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and I'm still a secret to most of his family, said uncle probably included.  I told her I would ask my brother for the report, but I wasn't sure I could get it.  She told me it was okay.  While it's useful information and would inform what genetic tests would be done on me and would probably make my testing cheaper, they can work without it. 

Then she asked me to compile a list of every  member of my extended family who has had cancer too, as well as which type of cancer and at what age it developed.  I know some of that.  I know what I know anyway.  I don't know when their various cancers developed, but I know they all died soon thereafter or as a result of the cancer, and I know when they died, so surely that counts for something.  My information isn't lacking enough that I would try to ask for more anyway.  Most of the cancer in my family is on my father's side.  All of the "lady cancers" are, and those are the ones whose risk are heightened the most dramatically by this particular gene mutation.

I told my brother thank you for the information and thank you when he got me the extra pages from our uncle's report.  He's always very prompt in his replies.  I didn't mention that I already have heightened risk for colon cancer, which I inherited from our father's genes, in spite of our father pointing out in the email chain that he thinks he got "the good genes" because he hasn't yet had the same colon issues his brother or mother have had.  I'm not going to tell any of them the results of my genetics testing either, both because I don't think they want to know and also because I want to have information they don't have for a change.  I'm not mad at my half-siblings.  They are nice and kind to me, but I'm angry at my father every time I remember he exists, not just for this.  I get so angry when I think of him that I often cry in impotent rage, and I don't want anyone in his family to know that.  I want them to think I'm calmer and cooler than them, as I've always pretended to be.  I do not want them thinking I'm irrational and ungrateful or expecting too much.  I will take what I can get.  I will take months' old forwarded emails indicating that my daughter and I might want to get ourselves checked out for new and exotic cancer risks, carefully funneled through a third party so that I don't dare take liberties with my father by responding to him directly.  I know I have more than most DC people already.  But I'm still angry.  

Bright Side:  At least it's not ALS.  I scoured my raw genome data from 23andMe, and I'm definitely not getting ALS.

Talking with My Donor Sister

My half-sister and I have arranged a time to talk on the phone for the first time ever.  We've kept each other at arms' length for the last year, though it sounds like that wasn't really what either of us wanted.  I'm nervous.  What if she doesn't like me?  What if she has expectations and I don't meet them?  What if she asks me about my parents?  I'm glad we're doing this though.  We'll never be sisters in anything more than a technicality if we don't get to know each other at least a little, and we've both always wanted a sister.

I'm trying not to have expectations.  I'm trying to remember that a sane person -- any person who I should continue to maintain a relationship with -- will not make a snap judgment about me over our first conversation and decide she hates me.  I'm trying to think of things to say and questions to ask her.  So much seems too personal.  Scheduling our phone date made me so nervous that I forgot for a little while that she grew up with my biological father as her dad.  That'll be kind of a weird topic.  Is it creepy to ask about him?  Or is it expected?  I don't know.

I don't expect to have a preternaturally close bond with my half-sister.  We look a lot alike, but we don't share THAT much DNA, and we share zero history.  I just hope if I push through the awkward feelings that we can reach a point where we enjoy talking to each other.

Wish me luck.

Bright Side

If you don't yet know the identity of one or both of your genetic parents, and you don't yet have life insurance, consider buying a life insurance policy in 2016.  The forms generally ask for family medical history, and if you don't know yours, your life insurance can actually be a tad cheaper than it would be if you knew just how sick your biological family really is.  I got life insurance between finding out I'm donor conceived and finding out who my biological father is, and my family medical history for those forms was half the length it is now that I've found him.  It's called "plausible deniability."  Might as well force something useful out of parental anonymity.  Happy New Year's Eve, Everybody!