When TikToker Bailey Clark (@baileyclark03) was 13 years old, she found out she was adopted after going through her mom’s desk and coming face-to-face with her adoption papers.
She was told that her parents had gotten married when she was one, and she never had any reason to question this story. But her mom and dad both have brown eyes, and she has blue eyes, which should have tipped her off, but as a young teen, she just didn’t think much about it.
Another sign she missed was that her mom would have been 17 when she gave birth to her. She was born in 1989. Her dad was eight years older than her mom. It never crossed Bailey’s mind that that was a suspicious situation.
One day, she was home alone and decided to rummage through her mom’s desk for fun. She found a key, opened up a locked cabinet, and found her birth certificate and adoption papers. The adoption papers were not signed until she was six years old.
She called her mom in a panic and was able to reach her at work. She asked about the name of her birth father. Her mom rushed home and made it there in about 20 minutes, even though her workplace was 30 minutes away.
Bailey’s mom explained that she had gotten pregnant in high school. Bailey’s biological dad was dating a girl in high school and ended up getting married to her.
He had cheated on her with Bailey’s mom. When Bailey’s mom told him she was pregnant, he was about to go to college on a football scholarship, so he didn’t want anything to do with the baby.
“She basically had that one conversation with him, and that was all there was to it,” said Bailey.
“She never talked to him about it again until she got married to my dad, and then she started reaching out to him so that my dad could legally adopt me, and she said that for years, he would not sign the papers because what if he changed his mind?”
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At some point in 1996, he signed the papers. When Bailey found out about everything, her mom reached out to him because Bailey just wanted to know who he was.
At the time, he didn’t want to meet her because no one in his family knew about her. She didn’t meet him until she was 18. They went out to lunch together.
He didn’t want his wife or younger children to find out about her. He actually had another daughter who was six months older than her.
He had found out about that pregnancy, claimed it, and had custody of her every other weekend. However, he didn’t want to be a part of Bailey’s life.
He did allow Bailey to reach out to his other daughter, and they developed a relationship. They are no longer in contact. The man Bailey thought was her biological father ended up not being her biological father anyway, but she proceeded to think he was until she was 22.
One day, she ran into him at a baseball game and confronted him for not acknowledging her presence. They decided to do some DNA tests to confirm they were actually related. A week later, Bailey picked up the results, and it was not a match.
For the next two weeks, her mom swore something was wrong with the test because there was no way he wasn’t her father. Then, one day, her mom showed up at her workplace and handed her a cheek swab.
She wouldn’t tell her who the other half of the DNA test was for. But she sent it out, and it came back as a match.
Bailey connected with her actual biological dad, who was previously married and had two sons. She got along well with her brothers right from the start.
Bailey’s mom claimed that her father was the love of her life. He had gone off to basic training, and they wrote letters back and forth.
But Bailey doesn’t really know what to believe about her mom anymore. She has since stopped talking to her biological father because he never really embraced her. His wife was not on board with the whole thing.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
