She Might Have 10 Half-Siblings, And She’s Struggling With Whether Or Not It’s Selfish To Find Them
This 25-year-old girl grew up with a single mom in a tiny town that was all about drama and gossip.
She never had a dad in her life, though it dawned on her that he had to be somewhere out there in the world, but nobody knew his whereabouts.
She came to find out details about her dad from her mom, but he lied to her mom about pretty much everything.
“Firstly, my father liked to manipulate people. I can’t tell you if he was an airplane pilot, a truck driver, a traveling salesman, or if he even had a job – those are the lies my mother was fed over the period they were dating, and bless her heart, she thought he was just changing careers a lot,” she explained.
“To be frank, my mother thought that there was a 9-year age gap between them – he even lied about his age. It’s even more baffling when you think about the fact that he let my mom into his life despite these discrepancies.”
“She lived in an apartment with him like any normal couple would, she met his parents and even had a close bond with his mother, especially when she became pregnant with me. Sadly, his parents died around the time I was born, and they weren’t able to meet me. My mother wasn’t able to get closure, answers, or a method to track him down since she assumed they were his only family.”
Well, as luck would have it, her dad’s parents were not the only family members that her dad had.
As for why her parents broke up in the first place, her mom was seven or eight months pregnant with her when her dad’s alleged ex dropped by their apartment with a baby bump the same size.
Her dad had been driving around for business trips, and it turned out that was a lie too. Instead, he was living a double life and driving more than six hours one way to see his girlfriend.
annanahabed – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Her mom dumped her dad, but tried to remain in contact with him, as she was still pregnant and was hopeful about her and her dad one day having a relationship.
“Also, unsurprisingly, he didn’t keep in contact after I was born, but he did break my mother’s heart because of his next course of action,” she said.
“My mother had a hard birth and had to stay in the hospital for a few days. He knew, and he did show up to the hospital – but not for either of us. His other baby was born 3 days after me. He didn’t even visit me, that’s what broke her heart.”
“He disappeared after that, and my mother knew I had one sibling out there, but quite frankly, she didn’t know how to get in contact with the other mother and only somewhat remembered her name, but didn’t factor in spelling differences. She also didn’t know that he’d long since abandoned the other mother, too.”
Her mom tried to find her dad for years and even kept the same phone number, thinking maybe he would call one day. Finally, her mom knew she had to give up and was tasked with raising her all alone.
A few years ago, she decided to take a DNA test, and she was shocked to learn that her dad passed away two months before she got the results back.
She also discovered that she had cousins and aunts her mom had no clue existed. Her dad’s family also had no idea that she and her mom were out there, but they knew about her half-sister, who had been born three days after she was.
She reached out to one of her aunts and met her in real life. During that meeting, her aunt gave her a list of first names and ages of kids who were her half-siblings.
The complex thing about this is that her aunt had seen some of them over the years as babies, but there was no contact info for anyone on the list.
It’s been five years since she learned from her aunt that she has a list of 10 potential half-siblings, and there’s a large part of her that wants to find them all and get to know them.
The only thing fully stopping her is the fear that it’s a selfish wish to want to reach out to all of these people.
She has so far been able to find Becca, her younger half-sister who was born just days apart from her.
“5 years ago, I was able to get in contact with Becca after telling her the situation, and she was surprised that she had a ‘slightly older’ sister, and we bonded quite well,” she said.
“4 years ago, she fell off the face of the earth after a breakup and deleted her social media so I haven’t been able to contact her. She also wanted to find our other half-siblings to get to know them.”
She has been able to confirm that she has one half-brother named Joshua, who she did reach out to and ignored her.
She also found another half-brother of hers named Jake, but Jake told her aunt that if any of his siblings tried to find them, he wasn’t interested. She and Becca respected what Jake said to her aunt, so they never tried to find him.
She’s currently wondering about how she can go about attempting to contact the rest of her half-siblings. She only has the full names of three of her half-siblings, including Joshua, and that’s where her leads end.
“They’ve lived lives, probably not knowing anything about their other siblings as our father bounced around from one side of the country to the other throughout his years and went NC (no contact) with most if not all siblings,” she continued.
“I don’t want to be selfish, and I don’t expect to have a relationship with any of them, but it would be nice if I could; I just don’t want to overstep bounds.”
What advice do you have for her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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