Love Letter to Fellow NPEs (Not-Parent Expected)
Dear Friend,
We may or may not have ever met but we remain kin. We may not share DNA but we are kin in the sense of sharing a common bond in the discoveries of our histories. The profound feelings of having lost a part of ourselves when we learned our father was not our father, perhaps we were told of a different birthmother or half-sibling popped up on our 23andMe family tree.
We are more alike than you think. We have been lied to and deceived by people that in most cases we held dear and loved unconditionally. These are the same people that pulled the rug out from under us when confronted with the revelations. Some of them denied us of the truth, while others were angry and resentful that the secrets had been revealed. Our stories follow a long gamut of possibilities and outcomes, but we remain in the same family of broken hearts.
In the beginning, many of us do not know where to turn or what to do. Our commonalities grow as we try to determine how to handle the situation. So many questions. How do we address it? How to share the information we learned weighs heavily on our hearts. At times fear takes hold and at other moments anger, tears and confusion replace the ecstatic joy of knowing that craziness did not win.
I do not take our relationship lightly. In fact, it is probably the most serious connection I could ever experience. It is irreplaceable because it is not a relationship of choice but one of necessity and survival. It is a bond created by decisions out of our control. Our relatives will never understand what has evolved between us because whether they want to believe it or not, they connected us without even realizing it.
People want to be a part of something. They want to be included and accepted. We are no different yet, as NPEs, we are facing situations of rejection and inclusion all in the same breath by people that have always been a part of our lives and by complete strangers. This is not a club membership we aspired to being a part of throughout the years. It is not a group anticipated to be an answer to hold us up when we are down, to pick us up when we falter or to celebrate with us when another cog in the wheel falls into place.
(To Be Continued)