If you haven’t read the first installment of this series leading up this moment when I found my biological father, click here to read In Search Of My Father Part 1!
BOOM. It’s real. I FOUND HIM. It’s really him. REALLY HIM.
I have found my biological father.
I cannot believe it. I have actual, real information.
Can I handle this…?
He has a family. This information is as equally unsurprising as it is strangely hurtful. I mean, I’m 37. It was a long time ago. People get married and have kids….
Yet, he had said he never wanted kids.
He lives across the country. He has a social medial profile without photos of himself or family members. His wife and adult children do not have any social media profiles. Which, to me is extremely odd, considering every millennial I know has at least one social media profile, not zero. The only immediate family member with a social media account is his brother. When I look at his brother’s profile…I don’t see any in-your-face resemblance to my own (pun, intended).
I have so much information: his address, the names of his wife and kids. It’s a bit overwhelming.
What do I do now?
I am no longer a twenty-something, bored, and searching for her father. I am now a wife and mother. It then occurs to me I may have exposed his (presumably) secret past to his wife and/or his kids during my hasty attempt to connect with him over a decade ago.
Did I have the right to do so?
If I had indeed done just that, is this the reason his children and wife do not have social media accounts?
Did I cause strife in an otherwise happy family?
If he and the family are unaware of my existence, does my curiosity about my heritage trump his/their privacy and the possibility of shattering a family?
I have also asked myself countless times:
How I would feel if I learned I had a sibling I didn’t know existed and, as a wife, my husband had a child prior to meeting me and has kept it secret for 37 years?
These questions are not easily answered.
I find myself regularly asking these questions in search of the “correct” answer, which of course there is none.
I have yet had the courage (and audacity) to reach out to him.
This then posits the following questions:
How should I reach out to him? (I do not have his email, only his home address.)
Do I send a letter and risk someone else opening it?
Would the best approach be for me to fly across the country and approach him outside his home on the way to work, or me brazenly knocking on the front door on a Saturday morning?
Honestly, they’re all terrible and I don’t know what to do.
Do I continue living my life as I have, wondering what my biological father looks and sounds like, and never take the step to seek him out? Or, do I take the leap and upheave his life, possibly more than I already have?
Am I able to handle him rejecting me to my face?
There is so much to consider.
I’ve found my biological father…where do we go from here? What would you do?
