I'm not who I thought I was...

[starweb]

I found out a few months ago that the man who raised me is not my biological father. It wasn't a complete and total shock. I always thought there was something off about our family. For one thing, both my parents had blue eyes and mine were brown. I know, there are instances when that could happen...but I was just all around 'darker' than my two blue-eyed light haired brothers. My paternal side of the family is part Native American (the real thing, rez born, tribal members) but I always looked like I was 'more' Indian than my brothers. I used to joke with my own kids that I must have been switched at birth. 

 

I did the Ancestry DNA and sure enough, my blood Quantum is much higher than it should be if the man I thought was my dad was my natural father.  As both of my parents had passed away, there was no one to ask but finally, a cousin fessed up. My one brother asked her to tell me if she outlived him. He passed away in 2015. She couldn't tell me a whole lot, as she was only five years old at the time,  it was mostly what had been told to her, just that mom had an affair with a neighbor but it ended badly, dad took her back, got a good job offer in another state and left to start over.  My biological father died a long time ago when I was ten years old. I went back on ancestry and found links to a whole bunch of cousins from that family. I had a half-brother, who has passed away but he's left children and grandchildren.

 

Mom was a super religious person which might have come about as a result of all that. She lived in fear that I would get pregnant before I was married. (Looking back, that is so funny now).   I tell myself they could have made different decisions, dad could have been awful about it but I think they just came to an understanding to never mention it again and they didn't, at least not around me. My other brother is on the autistic spectrum and I haven't talked about it with him. Told my two older kids, they weren't surprised. Still waiting to tell the youngest as I think this is something that should be told in person and he lives out of state. The only time I get angry about it when I realize my kids could be enrolled and get part of the per capita earnings from the casino. They have medical bills and educational bills and could use it.

 

Then I discover I'm ACE. My marriage was good but the sex life was off because...of course, it was. 

 

So now, while I'm telling myself I'm the same person I was before I knew, I'm not really.  I haven't decided whether or not to contact my 'new' family or try to push to get my children enrolled. The rules say you have to do this when they were minors, but I didn't know when they were minors. If someone had just told me.....!!!!!!

 

Haven't come out to anyone in real life. Haven't made a decision about that yet...

 

Anyway, at my age, I'm having to deal with a whole new identity in more ways than one. 

[Ousel]

That is a lot to be sitting on. I'm glad there are some folks you can talk to, but it still sounds lonely. 

Certainly there's no rush, you can contact bio fam if and when you're ready to. It does sound like there's a bit of a rush on getting the benefits for your kids, and like you might have to knock on some doors to get it done since it's a less-than-usual situation. I'm having to do some door knocking for myself at the moment and it takes a lot of energy.  

 

[Techie]

I have to say that I was very grateful when I got my Ancestry.com results back and everything was as expected (for the most part). My initial ethnicity results were a surprise listing me as 26% Scandinavian. Recently though, Ancestry fine tuned their results and suddenly I am now 66% Germanic and 8% Norway which makes much more sense as three of my four grandparents were from Germany. Glad to see you were able to find cousins that can hopefully fill in the gaps. I was quite stunned at the number of 3rd and 4th cousins that turned up. Amazing how so many of us are related. Would not surprise me if the occupants of 1 out of every 100 cars on the road might be related to each of us somehow.