How Would You Feel About Finding Out About Family Secrets Of Years Ago?

[candy candy candy]

ok i found out in 1992 when my mom died that she had a baby boy when she was around 17 or so. i heard she gave him up for adoption and that he died in the late 70's. that was all i knew.

 

i was told growing up that this man was my dad, i never ever met him nor talked to him, my mom and him were divorced years before i came along, so he was not my dad yet my mom wanted me to believe he was and the same with my sisters, he was not their dad either but my mom wanted them to belive he was.

 

so now fast forward a few decades later 2005 and now i find out that the boy my mom had was raised for a whle by her parents, my grand parents in another state where they use to live, and then my aunti who lived in that state raised him for several years.

 

he got married had a family and i had a brother i never knew about and cousins i never met! i know find out via the cousin that he had lived with in the other state that he had a daughter who had a baby 14 years ago and left the baby at the hospital and left the hospital.

 

my cousin is raising that baby who is now 14 years old! i never even knew this either! i also know now that no one knows who my real dad is and this is most troubling to me of everything!

 

i tried to get hospital and baptism records from when i was born but lo and behold records were not put on micro film at that time and records before 1960 have all been destroyed!!!!

 

sad. that is the only word i can think of to describe how my heart feels. am i too old for feeling so hurt and sad? how would you feel? i am entitled to know who my sperm donor is arent i? i know he is probably long passed away by now but just a name would be great!

 

i am 48 and i feel maybe i am too old to wallow in all this. there are other family secrets as well similar to these.

 

it is obvious that my mom had a shady past to say the least and didnt want us to know about it, but i still feel jilted by my mom while my sisters go on worshiping her as if she was a saint because she "had her reasons" not to tell us about the baby boy or the truth about our fathers..

 

maybe she did have that right, but what about my rights? they were also violated, were they not? or not?

am i wrong in this? please give input, please! thanks!

[suegail]

It's not that I feel you are 'wrong' for feeling as you do. It's understandable, but I would say don't spend the remainder of your life dwelling on the unfairness of the whole situation. It's too bad your mom didn't feel she could share any of this information with you, but what's done is done, for whatever reasons she had, and I think it's good to try and preserve any good memories you have of your mom, as your sisters are trying to do.

 

Maybe with more searching you'll reconnect with lost family members. I'm surprised that the records are now destroyed. I didn't think they would ever do that with any birth records or such. In fact I'm astonished. Did your mom have any sisters or brothers who might be able to shed some light on this? Someone might remember the name of the man your mom was seeing around that time? Someone somewhere must know something I would think. Maybe if you keep digging...

 

Best of luck to you...

[Lil Honey]

Your dad had a daughter (your half-sister) who abandoned her child (his grandchild) and a cousin is caring for that child. I get the impression that you know the cousin who is caring for the child, so that cousin would know the mother of the child, who would know her dad (your dad, too). Soooo, the cousin should be able to give you some names . . .

 

Maybe the hospital purges info, but I would think that you could get a copy of your birth certificate from the State. They don't destroy those, because it is proof of your citizenship. Folks get copies of them all the time for a variety of legal issues.

 

As far as your feelings . . . I can understand that you feel that you've been deceived, but what's done is done. Nothing will change, unless you want it to by contacting lost family members. And that may turn out to be an opportunity.