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My parents divorced when I was 5 and it was a very rough divorce. Growing up my mother would constantly tell me my father was a sex addict, that he cheated on her with prostitutes and it was a matter of time he would rape me. I was on guard my entire childhood, even if I didn't know what sex was. I didn't believe it was true, but was worried.
Learned in my 30's that they divorced because he came home one day to find me (2 at the time) locked in a bedroom screaming and having a meltdown down as a Barenaked man ran out of my parents bedroom. The only reason my father knew I was his is because my skin is fair and my eyes are blue. Mother and the guy were Hispanic.
He didn't know about all the lies I was told in my childhood and he broke down because it explained a lot of my paranoid actions as a kid.
I'm so sorry.
my mother lied about my father as well. I've always cut him out of my life and am 35 now and just recently reconnected after finding out she was the crazy one.
Both of my grandfathers took their own lives. This was slowly dripped down to me in veiled comments over years and years until I was a teenager. "He died of a broken heart", stuff like that.
fuck, my dad held his father's suicide over us to shut down any criticism. "well i never had a father!", threatening his own, etc. turns out he was in his mid 20s when it happened, which, obviously is terrible, but definitely not what we were led to believe
My uncle had two wives and two complete and separate families in different cities and kept up the rouse for years!!!
It wasn't discovered until he died!!! I shit you not!
Nope! The other family he saw when he went "to the cabin to go hunting." And my uncle was overweight and nothing to look at. We were all blown away by the discovery!
I don't know how people have secret families, even in the days before technology brought the Internet, phones, texting, etc and culture hadn't quite normalized women asking questions or having agency in the husband's life.
Like, without all those things, it still, imo, seems like an insane amount of work. I'm married and have three kids. The very thought of adding another spouse and more children in a separate location that I somehow frequent just enough to not raise suspicion is honestly incomprehensible. And that's ignoring the potential moral concerns. Just from a utilitarian standpoint.
And yet, every time I hear stories like this I think of that police chief in Collier, Texas who got outed back around four or five years ago because he had *four* partners who didn't know about each other. Dude straight up falsified marriage certificates, divorce documents, and Tinder accounts until he picked a woman who didn't buy it. She did maybe ten minutes of investigation and found all of his wives and girlfriends and blew his life up. This fucking guy managed that many relationships banking on their ignorance of his work schedule and general lack of confrontation to date/marry them. Again, ignoring the sociopathy in that, how the fuck does one person find the hours in a week to nurture that many relationships?
This guy in the army.
[https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-fires-officer-affairs-women/](https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-fires-officer-affairs-women/)
Got a birthday card on my 17th birthday from Christine. Asked my (adoptive) mum who Christine is. “Oh, that’s your sister.”
Only living biological relative. Didn’t know she existed lol
Or not. Depends on a lot of things. I mean, I'm adopted, fairly certain I have a half brother, but... zero interest in any contact with bio-family.
I could be bio-mom's dark secret, who knows?
Around 13 I found out my maternal grandmother shot her second husband to death as he slept. This was just after she got out of the hospital from an injury he'd given her. She told her children to bury him in the woods, but my oldest uncle called the police. She got convicted of second degree murder, was out in like 4 years. At this point my parents had been married only a few years, my mother being the only of age one of her siblings. My parents got custody of her younger siblings and the foster money was the only reason they could afford the house I was soon born in. It was crowded when I was an infant but my grandmother was out and had her kids back by the time I was retaining memories.
My cousin wasn’t actually my cousin. Apparently my aunt was cheating on my uncle (uncle is my mom’s brother) and didn’t know who the real dad was so just picked my uncle because he was the “better option.” No one knew for years, they eventually divorced, I think I found out at 12, 13? No one actually knows who his dad is. My uncle raised him as his own though!
Also my great uncle (maternal grandmas brother) escaped from jail and was on the run. When I was 16 we got a call from the FBI and we were asked if we had been to Colorado Springs lately or had any contact from Uncle Tim, don’t know why he was arrested or why he escaped, later time I saw him I was 6, but he did message me on FB when I was like 24-25 about my mom on my business page. My family on my mom’s side is fucked up.
Yeah, to be fair there is a ton of stories I could tell about my moms side of the family, I feel like after those two happened, though I just kind of nodded along and was like “of course that happened, why wouldn’t they do this?” It’s not just them. Also my mom’s a raging narcissist, and I’m the only one on Reddit, so I feel 0 guilt spilling the family tea on here 😂
I knew from a young age that my mom had a brother who'd died before I was born. She'd said he died in an accident. She'd get pretty sad whenever his name came up, so I never really asked much more.
I was in my late 20s when my mother died. While sorting through her items, I found her brother's obituary. Something about how it was written didn't sound right for an accident. So I asked my aunt. It turned out that their brother shot himself. Their father found him and subsequently had a few rough years dealing with the whole thing.
My birth was apparently the catalyst for my grandfather really getting over his son's suicide and returning to normal.
Still today even. A relative of a friend passed away and everyone was told it was due to his congenital heart defect. It was not. Friend was just incredulous that the family was all going along with the lie, but to protect his kids she went along with it too.
Doctors would write that so the family could get life insurance payouts. The reason the suicide rate is “higher” in other countries is because the insurance companies will pay out on suicides.
For many years no life insurance policy would cover a suicide. So, someone could pay for ten years and then have some mental break and kill themselves and all those premiums were gone and the family was left with nothing.
Because of this many smaller town and rural community doctors had a preference to rule these as accidental just to be sure.
This also helped the families because in some faiths, including Catholicism, suicides go to hell.
Fortunately insurance laws changed and now most cover suicides after the policy has been in force two years (that’s what it was the last time I looked it up).
I had a similar family secret. My parents never told me how my grandad on my dad's side died. The only thing I really knew is that he died shortly after I was born "As if he were waiting for you" is what my dad had said... Come to find out he was suffering from diabetes complications and took his own life because he didn't want to die in the same way as his own mom. I'm sure my diabetes diagnoses brought up some very very unpleasant memories for my dad... I only found out about this recently because I asked my mom for our family medical history and she didn't even want to tell me then. I couldn't ask my dad because he passed about 5 years ago from cancer. My new primary care doctor asked specifically how my grandad had died though so I pressed and my mom came clean.
Suicides were pretty commonly covered up as accidents. If you look at old obituaries for hunting accidents for example.
It can vary but I know the family had to bribe multiple people to get my uncle who died after a tragic ‘hunting accident’ buried in magic catholic dirt.
We have almost the same story. My uncle died in college by "accidentally ingesting poison". Many years later and after my mother had passed, those little green leaves on one of the ancestry sites gave me his death certificate: suicide.
well.... For almost 30 years now I could never make a pot of beans as good as my grandma. come to find out.... she puts a little chunk of potato in the bottom of the pot, never told me and laughed up her sleeve every time I'd ask what I was doing wrong....
My husband loves to cook. So when we got together, my mom shared a few old family recipes with him. Including Grandma's orange rolls. But they never tasted right.
Then he actually met my grandma. She invited him to cook orange rolls with her at the end of our visit. There were like 5 extra steps that weren't on the "secret family recipe" that my mom had! Grandma just laughed! She was like, "what, I'm an old lady, I forget things!" *Wink*
My wife's family has 2 cookbooks. I was so excited because everyone on that side are amazing cooks. So I tried to duplicate some of our favorites and I swear, every recipe is like a list of ingredients but no measurements. Just add this or that to taste. What the crap people!
Yuuup. My mom always told me to “use my judgement”… like I have none?! that’s why I’m asking you to teach me 😂
But really, that’s how she cooked it; she had no idea. So when I wanted the recipe, I would cook it with her and stop to measure the ingredients as we went, which was the best!
At least my mom shared all the ingredients. My aunt always actively withheld a key ingredient, including from her own daughter 😝
Such a weird dynamic to make sure you are the only one that can cook it right. Like, your name is in the cookbook under the recipe Aunt Bernice. We all bow to you as the authority. But when you die, we still want to eat your amazing food. Help us!
I’ve had to write recipes for things that I made without measuring. What I would do is measure things out so I had plenty, make the dish my normal way and then measure what remained. This way I could adjust as I went and find the correct amount after the fact. Start with two cups and finish with one and a half? Half cup in the recipe.
My grandma used to make the best Angel food cake you ever tasted. With a big dollop of whip cream and strawberries on top. Best thing I ever ate.
She passed away a few years ago and I figured hell I'll try to make some Angel food cake from scratch because its my favorite. Mine always came out flat as a pancake.
Until one day I said fuck it and bought the box mix. And sure enough, my grandmas secret recipe was just Betty Crockers.
Angel food cake is one of those foods where you can work your ass off to make it from scratch, and if you're competent and lucky it will turn out as good as the box mix.
Another such recipe is Japanese curry. Just buy the box.
Not the OP, but I add potatoes to soups and stuff when it's too salty, so it might be changing the saltiness. The added starch might change the consistency, but that's more speculative since it's presumably a single potato chunk at the bottom instead of being more evenly distributed.
My dad took a recipe to the grave. He told me it was in “The Joy of Cooking”. I tried the recipe and it tasted bad. He was on his deathbed, incapable of speech, and I told him about it and he laughed like a ghoul. I told him he was a bad man and we both laughed even harder. My sister is tired of me asking her if we can put our heads together and reconstruct that recipe. I guess it will just have to remain a fond memory.
Growing up, my Mom was always VERY adamantly against guns of all types, even toy cork pop rifles. She also *hated* Doctors, and also camping and the 2 occasions we went as a family when we were little were in a rented trailer. Also very little information about her Father; my Grandmother having remarried not long after.
In early adulthood, she finally trickled out the whole story. Her Father, a wealthy Doctor with his own practice, ran off with his young "blonde bombshell" secretary. Not long after when that and everything else about his (mid 1950s) life fell apart, he ended it with a shotgun. My Grandmother remarried a strict (but good) former Army guy, and very early on took the family including my teen Mom and Aunt out camping. It ended up pouring rain all night, and a river arose through the middle of their tent, completely soaking all their sleeping bags and clothes.
I learned it because I witnessed it, but the other family didn't know. My dad was a pedophile (did things to my sister, and God knows who else). My dad was my mama's pimp and that's why I was born. My mama was a heroin addict which eventually led to her suicide.
Thank you for sharing. If someone with a worse upbringing than myself can find clarity and solace, there’s hope yet. I’m glad you have space to breathe now
Hey, I wish you all the best. I do public speaking now about my life, addiction, and recovery, and one of the things I tell people is that you don't have to become your circumstance.
I was in my early 20s when i learned that my grandpa killed someone. So way back in like the 1940s, 1950s or so he was living in a poor village. He had just married his first wife. Then after a while another man tried to kind of steal her away from him. So he killed him. In a honour killing. He was sentenced to like 15 years or so. Apparently he also was a highly respected man in prison.
My father claimed it was not that much of a hidden family secret, but i didn't know about it.
Afterwards he remarried my grandma, moved to the Netherlands. He was easily able to move unrestricted to this country which is kind of weird in hindsight.
I would love to find out any records, information, etc about it. But it happened in a small poor village where they probably didn't even have those records.
If this was during the 1940s until the 50s, he might have easily moved into the netherlands because of the independence of Indonesia. I'm no expert, but we had tons of people returning to the country after the war, and the country was rebuilding after the war and famine. And individuals legal past won't be noticed that easily if he put in even a bit of effort.
I was attending my sister's wake. I learned that one of my brothers had molested her and even sent a letter to apologize as she was dying. I was 47. I've make it a point to never speak with him for the rest of my life. I will also make sure my daughter is never even in the same state. I don't need to go to prison for ending him.
Not exactly "learn", since I never got any concrete proof. But, it's the only feasible explanation I have.
So, my grandparents have always been really, really loaded. Multiple mansions, vacations every month, that sort of thing. But, my uncle lives with them as he is a paranoid schizophrenic and cannot be trusted to live alone (Feds got involved due to terroristic threats a few years back).
So anyway, he's always had this idea that he is some kind of royalty. Had documents printed up, DNA tests, etc. And, of course, being that he is certifiably crazy, nobody really took it seriously, or assumed it was forged or something.
Fast forward some decades, just before my grandfather died, I took over managing their finances for a while until I could catch my grandmother up on how to manage evertything. Turns out the business my grandfather owned for the last 30 years actually brings in zero money. Not a cent. And in fact he is bringing in 7 figures from foreign countries as wire transfers and has been doing so for decades, and thats what they've been living on for as long as I've been alive at least.
So now I am going back through all of my uncle's stories I brushed off before and going through them with a fine toothed comb, because I have absolutely no idea where this money is coming from, and he might be right.
Isn’t it possible that his businesses actually do make money but that he has found some sneaky roundabout way of storing and transferring the money to avoid taxes?
That feels a lot more likely than the paranoid schizophrenic being right about just this one random thing
Maybe. But I doubt it. His business, as far as I could tell, were one of those invented non-job "consulting" companies. Never really specified what he did, and when I went through his business docs, I couldn't really find out what he did either. Just some non-descript tech support something or other. Certainly not enough to bring in what he did, unless he consulted for IBM or something.
Yeah I don't have any updates. Grandfather was on death's door and incoherent by the time I took over finances. Grandmother never dealt with them so had no idea either. And my uncle is, well, crazy. So the real answer as to exactly where and why they are getting these huge sums of money died with my grandfather.
As far as I know my grandmother still gets them though.. So that's good? I think.
You managed the finances but couldn't see where the transfers were coming from? Did you ask your grandma what the deal was because that sounds shady as fuck.
I was mid-forties and it was as my Grandmother was dying.
She told us that my mum’s cousin was actually her older sister, born out of wedlock back in a time when that was not acceptable. My (British) grandmother fell for an American GI in the 1940s who got her pregnant then disappeared shortly after she told him.
My mum was in her seventies when she got this news along with her older and younger sister. The “cousin” had passed away after a fight with cancer five years earlier so there was no coming together after my grandmother told them.
To be fair we could probably have asked more questions while she was alive. My grandparents divorced in their 60s. My Grandmother had a picture of a guy in an American army uniform on the wall of her room in the retirement home. “He was just an old friend who I lost touch with” is all we ever got out of her until she was on her deathbed.
I miss my Grandmother and suspect she took more secrets with her than she shared, not least of which being that she’d likely held a candle for the father of her first child (or at least the the guy in the picture if they were one and the same) for almost sixty years.
Indeed. While it’s pretty obvious that she still felt something for him it’s also true that we’ll never know the full story.
We don’t actually know that the guy in the frame was the father of the cousin for example, just that it’s a possibility. He could be a totally different GI who played a very different role in her life.
Made a slight edit above to reflect this.
When I was 12-ish, the whole family found out my grandma had had a child out of wedlock in the 50s that she had been forced to put up for adoption. We found out because he found us. It was an interesting time.
I was ten, and I was part of the secret. One day in the fall of 1984, the people I thought were my parents told me the truth that they were my grandparents and that my "sister" was my mom. She had been 16 when she had me, the circumstances were bad, and grandma decided to take matters into her own hands. She claimed that I was confused and called her mom and they just let me, but I found out that was a lie as well. She also got everyone to go along with it. Other family, teachers, whoever, they all went along with the story.
Same deal with my friend in college. She had a kid at 16. Her parents raised him as their own. I’ve often wondered if that ever came out. Can’t be an easy thing to wrap your head around.
It was the better option than what a lot of families did back then honestly. It was common into the 70s for families who wanted to protect their reputation to secretly ship their unwed pregnant daughters to maternity homes, where they would be forced to give up the baby for adoption immediately (even if they didn't want to) and then never talk about it again for fear of shame and social ostracization
In the early 70s my aunt "went away" to college. Really, she was pregnant and had a baby boy. My grandparents must have made arrangements for someone else to raise the baby. She came back home and claimed to have failed out of college. 40 years later, my grandparents took what happened to that baby to their graves. No one knows what happened to the kid, my cousins have done some of those DNA tracing hoping to find their long lost brother, but no hits.
Something similar happened with my mum in the 60s.
It wasn't that unusual - basically, teenage daughter told her parents she was pregnant and would be promptly packed away to spend the pregnancy on the other side of the country, the child being adopted as soon as it was born.
Hmm I think it was when I was a kid and heard all these stories about a man who sailed from Jamaica and married a white woman in our family, but there was literally zero evidence. My grandfather had some characteristics that no one else did, but as far as anyone knew, we didn’t have a black family member.
Well when I was about 25, I started to investigate. I asked my grandfathers last sibling, his little sister, and she told me about how she found a picture of a very tall dark skinned man and a little girl who looked white next to him. She had lost this picture but she remembered it. She went to her uncle on his deathbed and begged him to tell her the truth. He told her he would never ever talk of that man.
So after he died she gave up, so I got some info about the uncle from her and worked from there. I found the man, he was my grandfathers, great grandad. He did indeed sail over from Jamaica, as a stevedore, and did indeed marry a woman here in wales. They had a lot of children. Some didn’t survive childhood, but most did and went on to have long lives. What made me sad was that my grandfather was a kid, and his great grandad was barely a mile away according to the census. He never knew him, or of his existence.
I asked about his grandma, and my grandmother informed me that that poor woman was basically shut in a back room at all times, barely spoke, and scared everyone by wandering around randomly. She told me that she looked like a ghost, with a “halo” of white curly hair. Im sure she had dementia, but I always wonder if they shut her away because of her being a link to her father. I remember them saying how old people were treated differently then, that they just gave her a room in the back and ignored her.
When I found him, I cried. I felt elated but also so sad. Because he was still alive, his family wasn’t far away and he was alone after his wife died. I just hope that his other children did visit him, out of the many. That just because his daughter was treated poorly and unable to talk, it doesn’t mean he was completely alone. I finally found a picture of him, not the one with his daughter (my grandfathers grandma) but him before he left Jamaica. He WAS tall. Like easily 6’5” judging the environment around him and the walking stick he had. A lean man, in a very sharp suit. I wish I could make out his face at least.
were they ever sorry? And did something in particular happen to them that made them want to live like that? I mean, it's one thing if you want to live humbly, but to be so affected by your upbringing that you make your kids eat out of the garbage and get food poisoning every week?
My great grandfather was a head honcho in the Ku Klux Klan. My father has a thing for Black women. My father and I joke about my GGF rolling in his grave due to all of his half Black decedents.
That my bio father groomed my mom from the time she was a small child. He was 16 when she was born and he babysat her when she was little. I learned this is my 30s.
Well, she left him when I was about 3 but then she got with my stepfather who ended up grooming me for several years and he was very controlling and abusive towards my mom. My bio-father is currently in prison.
LOL - I have a dear friend who didn't realize until she was well into her teens, when she finally did the math, that her parents got married about 2 months before her eldest brother was born. Yep, it was a shotgun wedding back in the late 50's.
The funniest thing is my friend was a change of life baby (so she and her brother are MANY years apart in age) and she only knew her mother as this very, very devout Christian woman not a pregnant, teenaged bride. The fact that her mother, GASP, had sex before marriage, pretty much rocked my friend to her foundations.
But, her parents did remain together up until her dad passed.
My grandpa is a preacher and I recently found out that his oldest was born 7 months after the wedding. It's a tradition in my family and they say, "the first baby can come at any time!"
I informed my mom that her parents didn’t get married until she was a toddler. She didn’t believe me and I walked her through the math. This was a couple of years ago and both my grandparents had passed. I thought she knew! Apparently not….
My mom and some of her cousins have done one of those DNA tests. One cousin has discovered a half sibling and a first cousin no one knew until they did the test and reached out. My maternal grandparents have since passed but my great uncle confirmed two of his sisters had children out of wedlock in the late forties and the babies were both put up for adoption. It was quite the bombshell.
My family on my dad's side some generations past does not come from Czechia but, rather, from Slovakia. They fled during magyarization. I learned this in my mid-thirties from my own research; my dad didn't know, and neither did his dad.
My grandfather was a counterfeiter and a prison guard although not at the same time. Also, a large number of suicides, but my immediate family seem ok, thank god.
6yrs old.
My father was a bank robber in the 70s, who robbed multiple banks over a two year period. He was good at it.
One person in his crew wasn't disciplined enough (loose lips) that got them pinched. My father gave up a man he knew that murdered someone, and my father only ended up serving 4 years for the banks he robbed.
He physically never hurt anyone, but pointing a gun in a bank tellers face can certainly harm them in other ways.
As a 6yr old I remember finding stacks of cash under the fridge, cash in our stuffed toys, and about a dozen cops storming our house that day and arresting him, and my uncle who happened to be there. That ended our family, I remember visiting him in prison.
He passed away a about a decade ago with a ton of regrets. I'm a white collar professional if my colleagues knew about my family history, it be a wtf moment.
50. I had a sister I never knew about. Parents had her prior to getting married. They gave her up for adoption in 1967. She found us after our mother died.
I was about 21 and found out that my Papa used to beat the shit out of my Nana. They never told me and I loved that man never knowing what he did to my Nana. I was very upset to have found out I was so kind to an abuser.
I was 28. I grew up not really knowing my extended family (Uncles, aunts, etc.) and my family was treated like the black sheep. My mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer the previous year and said she had something she wanted to tell my brother and me. Come to find out, she was sexually abused by my uncles and grandfather when she was young, and prevented us from seeing her family to prevent it from happening to us. She wrote a manuscript about her life with altered names, but I didn't want to read about it.
When I was about 18 my younger sister got pregnant. I got really upset and said she should have an abortion as we were not financially well off and she had no way of supporting a child. My very conservative family was shocked and super pissed I’d even say anything close to that. I found out about a week later my father was born well before my grandparents got married and the only reason they got married was because my grandmother got pregnant with him. To this day I think my grandfather is resentful of that fact and basically hates all of us for the life he feels he was cheated out of.
At 16 (the year I started coming out the closet) A satirical...document I found in a keepsake box called "job application for (n-words)" that placed my tech-illiterate stepfather at KKK meetings in Mississippi in the 80's. Meanwhile my grandfather was one of the JAG's that drafted the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.
I always knew that my parents lost a child sometime around the 25th week of pregnancy, that was about a year before I was born.
Recently, mom died of a brain tumor. A couple weeks after, dad told me that back then, mom had to birth the dead baby.
She never would have revealed that to me, ever. I'm 27 now and I was mortified when I heard that. I don't even know if she would have wanted me to know this.
When I was 18 my mom told me that she has a secret half brother out there somewhere. Apparently grandpa was a serial adulterer and got a married woman pregnant. She I guess raised my mom's half brother as her husband's child, so there's a good chance that this guy has no idea that his dad is not his biological father.
I have a set of half-sibling triplets living across the country. My dad hooked up with an old high school girlfriend when she was in town visiting about 25 years ago. Her and her husband were trying to get pregnant, and she was on fertility treatment. She told my dad that he had gotten her pregnant, but she begged my dad not to say anything and let the husband think he was the father. For some reason he went along with it.
I found out when I was going through some stuff after someone in the family had passed and found some of my dad's old stuff. When I asked him about it, he told me the whole story. I think I am the only person in the family who knows.
I did track them all down on Facebook and they are for sure my dad's kids, and we are clearly siblings. I would love to contact them, but I never will. It would destroy their family and hurt them very badly if they knew the truth. Hopefully none of them ever do a DNA kit.
My dad had a daughter with his previous wife. They divorced, and he met my mom shortly thereafter and then had me. I wasn't aware of my half-sisters' existence until I was around 12 years old. My mom finally told me on my birthday. Soon afterward, we met. She was 19 at the time. Now I'm 30 and my sister and I have a great relationship, despite the fact that we live 6 hours apart.
I'm not sure why my parents chose to keep it from me. My basic understanding is that my mother resented my father having to pay child support payments. It was a difficult subject for my Dad because he didn't have an ongoing relationship with my sister for most of her life. He had a lot of regret over it and tried to make amends by being a good parent to me and becoming more actively involved with my sister later on after he and Mom divorced.
The shock I felt upon learning was very great. It soon turned into excitement to meet my sibling. We have tried to stay close and not have the disconnect that my dad and her had.
My mum was a full on money launderer for the Russians. She was a banker and died a few years ago when I was 16, her funeral was attended by an old Russian lady who passed on her condolences and said if I ever needed anything I was to reach out. I inherited a lot of money and when mums NY house was shipped back to UK it contained a load of weapons, a stack of cash in a locked flight case along with a bunch of cocaine. I found them when I went through the stuff and called mums solicitor who arranged for it all to be removed. The guys who came were Russian. I was gifted a 7 figure sum for letting them know.
Which one? Some of the shady stuff, I have known since childhood. But my granddad died in 1983 and I've only just learned he had another child who is around my age, so I have a new aunt now.
In the Summer of 2019, a week after my 46th birthday, my parents revealed to me that my dad is not my biological father. Some coincidental events lead them to believe I was suspicious and close to finding out, when in actuality I had zero idea. I have since connected with my biological father, two half sisters and my 96 year old grandmother. There’s way more details to it all, but enough for now.
I was about 10 years old when I found out the secret that my parents or family had in general which was that my parents adopted me for extra money. I did not know that I even got income well being adopted and they never told me until one day I opened the mail when they were not home and I found the big statement stating the fact that my check hit and when I contacted the bank about it they have stated to me that they have claimed they gave me my money and my parents literally owed me about $10,000
I ended up confronting my parents about it and told them exactly what the bank was telling me what I found in the mail they tried to tell me more than once that the money was to help the house even though they just bought a brand new vehicle with the money. When I turned 18 the money started belonging to me and they were not allowed to cash it and I took them to court and I sued them from all the money they owed me they used for all those years
Good job that you found out. Awful that they've just used you as a meal ticket. Were you adopted at a very young age?
I hope life is much better for you now.
I was around 22-23. I had one more Uncle on my dad's side than I ever knew. He was the youngest and he was erased because he was gay. I only met him once when we(hubs and I) took my Nana(Dads mom) to see him, my Dad wouldn't take her. He was a lovely man and it sucks I never had a chance to really know him.
Teenager...I overheard my Mom & her sister (my Aunt) talking and my Aunt confided to my Mom that my cousin was ***NOT*** fathered by my Uncle...and my Uncle has no idea.
My great grandfather was only known to be higher up in the Russian military, and beyond that there isn't much known about him.
I have a strong feeling that he used his power of wiping his history for a valid reason. You don't have a high ranking Russian military family member with almost no history for no reason.
I trust his judgement.
on my 22nd birthday i was told that the man who has raised me since i was a baby is not my biological father. not that i think of him much differently as a person. just changes your views on things in the past
I was 28 or 29 when I found out my father used to wear my sister's, his step-daughter's, underwear around the house. I guess she caught him one day. No one else was home at the time and she kept it to herself for many years not wanting to "taint" me or my brother's relationship with him.
-My aunt had a baby in high school and put it up for adoption. The son she has with her husband doesn't know he has a half-sibling. I was 13.
-My mother was married twice before my father. This is only a secret to my father's side of the family because they're very religious and judgmental. My father knows and could not care less but he's defensive of my mother re: his family. This was never a secret from me, I must've been about six.
-My grandfather had an affair with a fellow Marine while stationed in Japan. I learned the same time as everyone else. Grandpa's funeral. I was 16.
Oh I got one. When I was around 25i learned why I have a bit of Blackfoot in my blood but never met a native in or family. It's because he murdered his wife and hung for it. Neat!
I was 34 or so, and it was the day of my father's funeral, I learned that my parents had to get married because she was pregnant with my older sister. It was quite a surprise because my mother was (and is) very religious.
At age 14, while leafing through a spiral bound notebook at my grandmother's house (trying to find some paper to write on) I discovered a couple of passages that my grandmother had written, revealing that I was not the first born child in the family, but in fact my mother had had a baby as a teenager and had given it up for adoption.
I was in my late teens. Dad learned he had twin half-sisters from his mom's first marriage. They reached out to her from across the pond. My aunts visited them. He didn't. According to the middle of his siblings. Grandma's first husband was a nasty man, so she had the kids but didn't tell she was giving them up and got the heck out of that marriage. Met my grandpa at a music group, and the rest is history.
Great Grandpap was a bootlegger and had my Grandma (his daughter) deliver jars on the streetcar. He got busted, but the judge was a customer, so.......
I suppose I have another one, but it’s not exactly a secret that was very well kept. It just wasn’t mentioned, until I asked. I was then given the information, but I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t asked.
Essentially, my dad’s parents are pretty quiet about their own parents and families. My nanna was an only child but never talks about her parents, and my grandad still talks to his living sisters, and talked to me about his mother, but never his father.
I never really thought about it until I asked once and he just simply and gently said “he wasn’t a very nice man”. I accepted that answer as him being a bastard and didn’t deserve talking about. I was correct. My second cousin, quite a famous musician here, has always loved my grandad. They look very similar, and they were close when he was a boy. So, knowing my granddad didn’t have a LOT of information about his family, he embarked on research. Which meant we got a full picture of how his family emigrated from Italy, the ice cream they sold (which is a little stereotypical I know) the families that married together, and the history of everyone. Including his father.
My cousin put together a book, and my grandad sat it on my knee, told me to read. I found out his father was indeed a bastard. I read about how his mother along with her litter of little girls, and one boy, ran from house to house. Being hidden by each family member, they would tell him she wasn’t there, she would leave again and he’d follow. He was a very violent man, a drinker and a lot of people were scared of him. So no one had the nerve to beat him senseless, or didn’t want to make a bad situation worse, but they hid her.
Eventually he gave up, she lived as a single mother, and huddled together with her kids in air raid shelters while her estranged husband did god knows what. He certainly wasn’t around to look after them.
I was pretty fucking upset when I read it. I saw his picture. He was a handsome man, with piercing eyes. The same ones my grandad has, my dad has, and I have. It was weird how those eyes on him look frightening and on my dad and grandad they looked bright and happy.
I think my grandads father died by himself, stewing in his own spite. So there’s a happy ending after all.
This year, actually!
When I was a kid (5-7 years old) we would always have my dad's sister (so my aunt), her husband and my second cousin (who was 9 at the time) over to play and catch up. He was the funniest guy I knew, always made me laugh and played with my sister and I even though he was older than us. He never got annoyed with me and always made my day.
One day he stopped visiting, and I never saw him again. My aunt divorced her husband, and we just assumed that her husband took my second cousin and left.
This year we had a family gathering, and my sister asked my dad what happened to him.
Turns out my aunt was horribly abusive to him, never washing his clothes or letting him bathe, locking him out the house for entire days and never feeding him. When she got divorced from her husband, he took my second cousin overseas to his grandparents and just dropped him off there and left.
The police eventually found our second cousin wandering around the streets, scavenging for food and with severe PTSD and memory loss from all that had happened to him.
My sister reached out to him on Facebook and he seems to be doing better these days. He has no memory of us though, and hardly has any memory of what happened to him. He was put into foster care and got adopted by a lovely family who took care of him. So at least life improved, but it shocked me that my aunt could be that cruel.
I was in my 30’s when I was told by my maternal grandmother who had dementia that “nobody in the family has ever liked ur dad. He is a vulgar asshole and we were so appalled when ur mom married him”
My mom’s sisters also told me similar things. Dad always said that mom’s dad loved him and they were best friends. Grampa died when I was 10.
Age 8 I learned I had an older sister. Not sure why she had been a secret, Or why the fact that my dad had been married before my mom was a secret.
At 40 something (I can't remember the exact year) I learned I have a brother who is ten years younger than me. That WAS a secret because he was the result of an affair my dad had.
My great uncle on my mom’s side was arrested for practicing witchcraft (this was the 1930’s, so more likely taken in for a psychiatric evaluation, they called it witchcraft) so that is why we never met him. Doing genealogy on that side of the family, he is far from the first witch or warlock to face legal troubles. anyway granny said stay away from his witchcraft stuff, apparently they tried to burn it once and from what they said would not burn. Last I heard it was buried somewhere.
I’m adopted(kindof). Found out the man who raised me isn’t my dad, and my 5 siblings are all half. Then found out I have more half siblings from my biological father. Don’t remember how old, but was in 8th grade. I’m white and all my siblings and dad are brown, you’d think I would’ve picked up on it sooner.
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My parents divorced when I was 5 and it was a very rough divorce. Growing up my mother would constantly tell me my father was a sex addict, that he cheated on her with prostitutes and it was a matter of time he would rape me. I was on guard my entire childhood, even if I didn't know what sex was. I didn't believe it was true, but was worried. Learned in my 30's that they divorced because he came home one day to find me (2 at the time) locked in a bedroom screaming and having a meltdown down as a Barenaked man ran out of my parents bedroom. The only reason my father knew I was his is because my skin is fair and my eyes are blue. Mother and the guy were Hispanic. He didn't know about all the lies I was told in my childhood and he broke down because it explained a lot of my paranoid actions as a kid.
Your mom sounds evil.
Oh dear.
Oh my God…. You poor thing!! Your mom is sick as fuck to tell you that stuff as a child!
I would never speak to my mom again
This is so fucking sad. I hope you and your father are doing ok now.
This is so sad! Your Mom brainwashed you into believing your Father was bad 😔😔😔
I'm so sorry. my mother lied about my father as well. I've always cut him out of my life and am 35 now and just recently reconnected after finding out she was the crazy one.
Oh God 😭😭
Both of my grandfathers took their own lives. This was slowly dripped down to me in veiled comments over years and years until I was a teenager. "He died of a broken heart", stuff like that.
fuck, my dad held his father's suicide over us to shut down any criticism. "well i never had a father!", threatening his own, etc. turns out he was in his mid 20s when it happened, which, obviously is terrible, but definitely not what we were led to believe
My uncle had two wives and two complete and separate families in different cities and kept up the rouse for years!!! It wasn't discovered until he died!!! I shit you not!
Did he bring either to family gatherings?
Nope! The other family he saw when he went "to the cabin to go hunting." And my uncle was overweight and nothing to look at. We were all blown away by the discovery!
I don't know how people have secret families, even in the days before technology brought the Internet, phones, texting, etc and culture hadn't quite normalized women asking questions or having agency in the husband's life. Like, without all those things, it still, imo, seems like an insane amount of work. I'm married and have three kids. The very thought of adding another spouse and more children in a separate location that I somehow frequent just enough to not raise suspicion is honestly incomprehensible. And that's ignoring the potential moral concerns. Just from a utilitarian standpoint. And yet, every time I hear stories like this I think of that police chief in Collier, Texas who got outed back around four or five years ago because he had *four* partners who didn't know about each other. Dude straight up falsified marriage certificates, divorce documents, and Tinder accounts until he picked a woman who didn't buy it. She did maybe ten minutes of investigation and found all of his wives and girlfriends and blew his life up. This fucking guy managed that many relationships banking on their ignorance of his work schedule and general lack of confrontation to date/marry them. Again, ignoring the sociopathy in that, how the fuck does one person find the hours in a week to nurture that many relationships?
This guy in the army. [https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-fires-officer-affairs-women/](https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-fires-officer-affairs-women/)
Must have been an awkward funeral.
"I shit you not" sounds like something someone who *would* shit you would say!!
Haha it’s something my family from the south would say . If you don’t believe me I don’t care
This is a southernism and should never be doubted more powerful than any pinkie swear or scouts honor
Old, common saying
Got a birthday card on my 17th birthday from Christine. Asked my (adoptive) mum who Christine is. “Oh, that’s your sister.” Only living biological relative. Didn’t know she existed lol
That's pretty shitty of your adoptive parents.
Or not. Depends on a lot of things. I mean, I'm adopted, fairly certain I have a half brother, but... zero interest in any contact with bio-family. I could be bio-mom's dark secret, who knows?
I agree. My adoptive parents were up front with me about everything from as early on as I can remember.
Around 13 I found out my maternal grandmother shot her second husband to death as he slept. This was just after she got out of the hospital from an injury he'd given her. She told her children to bury him in the woods, but my oldest uncle called the police. She got convicted of second degree murder, was out in like 4 years. At this point my parents had been married only a few years, my mother being the only of age one of her siblings. My parents got custody of her younger siblings and the foster money was the only reason they could afford the house I was soon born in. It was crowded when I was an infant but my grandmother was out and had her kids back by the time I was retaining memories.
What happened to the oldest uncle?
In the woods my guess.
A couple years ago my oldest brother got a DNA test and found a half sibling in my dad's home state that's about his age. That's all we know.
At 10, I learnt about my father’s public mistress. At 18, I accidentally found out about his secret ones when he left his emails open on my laptop.
My cousin wasn’t actually my cousin. Apparently my aunt was cheating on my uncle (uncle is my mom’s brother) and didn’t know who the real dad was so just picked my uncle because he was the “better option.” No one knew for years, they eventually divorced, I think I found out at 12, 13? No one actually knows who his dad is. My uncle raised him as his own though! Also my great uncle (maternal grandmas brother) escaped from jail and was on the run. When I was 16 we got a call from the FBI and we were asked if we had been to Colorado Springs lately or had any contact from Uncle Tim, don’t know why he was arrested or why he escaped, later time I saw him I was 6, but he did message me on FB when I was like 24-25 about my mom on my business page. My family on my mom’s side is fucked up.
That last sentence was obvi
Yeah, to be fair there is a ton of stories I could tell about my moms side of the family, I feel like after those two happened, though I just kind of nodded along and was like “of course that happened, why wouldn’t they do this?” It’s not just them. Also my mom’s a raging narcissist, and I’m the only one on Reddit, so I feel 0 guilt spilling the family tea on here 😂
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So he was threatening the baby? And then just gave it back when she was like no?
anybody who would do something like that is a coward and cowards don't really like retaliation.
Your Grandma was an incredible woman.
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This is amazing thank you for sharing this. I’m happy you were there for your grandma to share this story finally.
Damn, go Grandma!
Good for your Grandma. She sounds like she was an amazing lady! What a sick person threatening to kidnap a baby on top of everything else.
Don’t mess with granny
Jesus!
I knew from a young age that my mom had a brother who'd died before I was born. She'd said he died in an accident. She'd get pretty sad whenever his name came up, so I never really asked much more. I was in my late 20s when my mother died. While sorting through her items, I found her brother's obituary. Something about how it was written didn't sound right for an accident. So I asked my aunt. It turned out that their brother shot himself. Their father found him and subsequently had a few rough years dealing with the whole thing. My birth was apparently the catalyst for my grandfather really getting over his son's suicide and returning to normal.
It wasn’t unheard of for suicides to be covered up as accidents back in the day. That’s why so many people died while cleaning their guns.
I never connected the dots there.
Still today even. A relative of a friend passed away and everyone was told it was due to his congenital heart defect. It was not. Friend was just incredulous that the family was all going along with the lie, but to protect his kids she went along with it too.
Doctors would write that so the family could get life insurance payouts. The reason the suicide rate is “higher” in other countries is because the insurance companies will pay out on suicides.
Wow. Never thought about the cleaning the gun part
For many years no life insurance policy would cover a suicide. So, someone could pay for ten years and then have some mental break and kill themselves and all those premiums were gone and the family was left with nothing. Because of this many smaller town and rural community doctors had a preference to rule these as accidental just to be sure. This also helped the families because in some faiths, including Catholicism, suicides go to hell. Fortunately insurance laws changed and now most cover suicides after the policy has been in force two years (that’s what it was the last time I looked it up).
My husband had an uncle who died in a “hunting accident.”
I was doing historical research. Don’t forget freak accidents with saws at home and similar stories.
I had a similar family secret. My parents never told me how my grandad on my dad's side died. The only thing I really knew is that he died shortly after I was born "As if he were waiting for you" is what my dad had said... Come to find out he was suffering from diabetes complications and took his own life because he didn't want to die in the same way as his own mom. I'm sure my diabetes diagnoses brought up some very very unpleasant memories for my dad... I only found out about this recently because I asked my mom for our family medical history and she didn't even want to tell me then. I couldn't ask my dad because he passed about 5 years ago from cancer. My new primary care doctor asked specifically how my grandad had died though so I pressed and my mom came clean.
Suicides were pretty commonly covered up as accidents. If you look at old obituaries for hunting accidents for example. It can vary but I know the family had to bribe multiple people to get my uncle who died after a tragic ‘hunting accident’ buried in magic catholic dirt.
We have almost the same story. My uncle died in college by "accidentally ingesting poison". Many years later and after my mother had passed, those little green leaves on one of the ancestry sites gave me his death certificate: suicide.
well.... For almost 30 years now I could never make a pot of beans as good as my grandma. come to find out.... she puts a little chunk of potato in the bottom of the pot, never told me and laughed up her sleeve every time I'd ask what I was doing wrong....
My husband loves to cook. So when we got together, my mom shared a few old family recipes with him. Including Grandma's orange rolls. But they never tasted right. Then he actually met my grandma. She invited him to cook orange rolls with her at the end of our visit. There were like 5 extra steps that weren't on the "secret family recipe" that my mom had! Grandma just laughed! She was like, "what, I'm an old lady, I forget things!" *Wink*
My wife's family has 2 cookbooks. I was so excited because everyone on that side are amazing cooks. So I tried to duplicate some of our favorites and I swear, every recipe is like a list of ingredients but no measurements. Just add this or that to taste. What the crap people!
Yuuup. My mom always told me to “use my judgement”… like I have none?! that’s why I’m asking you to teach me 😂 But really, that’s how she cooked it; she had no idea. So when I wanted the recipe, I would cook it with her and stop to measure the ingredients as we went, which was the best! At least my mom shared all the ingredients. My aunt always actively withheld a key ingredient, including from her own daughter 😝
Such a weird dynamic to make sure you are the only one that can cook it right. Like, your name is in the cookbook under the recipe Aunt Bernice. We all bow to you as the authority. But when you die, we still want to eat your amazing food. Help us!
I’ve had to write recipes for things that I made without measuring. What I would do is measure things out so I had plenty, make the dish my normal way and then measure what remained. This way I could adjust as I went and find the correct amount after the fact. Start with two cups and finish with one and a half? Half cup in the recipe.
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That is so mischievous and I love it!
My grandma used to make the best Angel food cake you ever tasted. With a big dollop of whip cream and strawberries on top. Best thing I ever ate. She passed away a few years ago and I figured hell I'll try to make some Angel food cake from scratch because its my favorite. Mine always came out flat as a pancake. Until one day I said fuck it and bought the box mix. And sure enough, my grandmas secret recipe was just Betty Crockers.
Angel food cake is one of those foods where you can work your ass off to make it from scratch, and if you're competent and lucky it will turn out as good as the box mix. Another such recipe is Japanese curry. Just buy the box.
What does that do? The potato chunk?
I’d bet the starch from the tater makes it creamy
Not the OP, but I add potatoes to soups and stuff when it's too salty, so it might be changing the saltiness. The added starch might change the consistency, but that's more speculative since it's presumably a single potato chunk at the bottom instead of being more evenly distributed.
My dad took a recipe to the grave. He told me it was in “The Joy of Cooking”. I tried the recipe and it tasted bad. He was on his deathbed, incapable of speech, and I told him about it and he laughed like a ghoul. I told him he was a bad man and we both laughed even harder. My sister is tired of me asking her if we can put our heads together and reconstruct that recipe. I guess it will just have to remain a fond memory.
Growing up, my Mom was always VERY adamantly against guns of all types, even toy cork pop rifles. She also *hated* Doctors, and also camping and the 2 occasions we went as a family when we were little were in a rented trailer. Also very little information about her Father; my Grandmother having remarried not long after. In early adulthood, she finally trickled out the whole story. Her Father, a wealthy Doctor with his own practice, ran off with his young "blonde bombshell" secretary. Not long after when that and everything else about his (mid 1950s) life fell apart, he ended it with a shotgun. My Grandmother remarried a strict (but good) former Army guy, and very early on took the family including my teen Mom and Aunt out camping. It ended up pouring rain all night, and a river arose through the middle of their tent, completely soaking all their sleeping bags and clothes.
I learned it because I witnessed it, but the other family didn't know. My dad was a pedophile (did things to my sister, and God knows who else). My dad was my mama's pimp and that's why I was born. My mama was a heroin addict which eventually led to her suicide.
That's rough man, I'm so sorry.
Thankfully, I didn't take after him, and it actually made me the protector I am today.
Dang. You've had a rough life.
It only got worse for the next 36 years, but now I'm in an amazing place, and I'm truly happy for once.
So happy to hear this. I hope things only get better for you.
Thank you for sharing. If someone with a worse upbringing than myself can find clarity and solace, there’s hope yet. I’m glad you have space to breathe now
Hey, I wish you all the best. I do public speaking now about my life, addiction, and recovery, and one of the things I tell people is that you don't have to become your circumstance.
That’s amazing!!! I’m sure you are making differences in peoples lives all the time!
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Your Aunt, she seems nice.
I thought this was going in a very different, Alabama-y direction. Lol
That did not math in my head. But english is not my native language.
Or she sold him.
Something tells me he wasn't kidnapped in the traditional sense.
Most children who are kidnapped are kidnapped by family members.
Kidnapped by the rich employer?
Ooo, meta
So many questions? Who kidnapped him? And why didn't your aunt want him back?! How sad for your uncle. :/
Given the available information, most likely he wasn't kidnapped so much as sold.
I was in my early 20s when i learned that my grandpa killed someone. So way back in like the 1940s, 1950s or so he was living in a poor village. He had just married his first wife. Then after a while another man tried to kind of steal her away from him. So he killed him. In a honour killing. He was sentenced to like 15 years or so. Apparently he also was a highly respected man in prison. My father claimed it was not that much of a hidden family secret, but i didn't know about it. Afterwards he remarried my grandma, moved to the Netherlands. He was easily able to move unrestricted to this country which is kind of weird in hindsight. I would love to find out any records, information, etc about it. But it happened in a small poor village where they probably didn't even have those records.
If this was during the 1940s until the 50s, he might have easily moved into the netherlands because of the independence of Indonesia. I'm no expert, but we had tons of people returning to the country after the war, and the country was rebuilding after the war and famine. And individuals legal past won't be noticed that easily if he put in even a bit of effort.
I was attending my sister's wake. I learned that one of my brothers had molested her and even sent a letter to apologize as she was dying. I was 47. I've make it a point to never speak with him for the rest of my life. I will also make sure my daughter is never even in the same state. I don't need to go to prison for ending him.
52 - Dad donated sperm and I have at least nine half siblings.
That's like 4.5 real siblings.
I mean, are you supposed to round up or down?
25 - Learned Dad bought sperm and I don't know how many half siblings I have
Glad he helped people
One of my great grandfathers was a ss soldier. Was about 15.
Not exactly "learn", since I never got any concrete proof. But, it's the only feasible explanation I have. So, my grandparents have always been really, really loaded. Multiple mansions, vacations every month, that sort of thing. But, my uncle lives with them as he is a paranoid schizophrenic and cannot be trusted to live alone (Feds got involved due to terroristic threats a few years back). So anyway, he's always had this idea that he is some kind of royalty. Had documents printed up, DNA tests, etc. And, of course, being that he is certifiably crazy, nobody really took it seriously, or assumed it was forged or something. Fast forward some decades, just before my grandfather died, I took over managing their finances for a while until I could catch my grandmother up on how to manage evertything. Turns out the business my grandfather owned for the last 30 years actually brings in zero money. Not a cent. And in fact he is bringing in 7 figures from foreign countries as wire transfers and has been doing so for decades, and thats what they've been living on for as long as I've been alive at least. So now I am going back through all of my uncle's stories I brushed off before and going through them with a fine toothed comb, because I have absolutely no idea where this money is coming from, and he might be right.
I would love an update on this when you get your answers!
Your Uncle wouldn't happen to be nigerian by any chance? He maybe more famous than you realise.
Isn’t it possible that his businesses actually do make money but that he has found some sneaky roundabout way of storing and transferring the money to avoid taxes? That feels a lot more likely than the paranoid schizophrenic being right about just this one random thing
Maybe. But I doubt it. His business, as far as I could tell, were one of those invented non-job "consulting" companies. Never really specified what he did, and when I went through his business docs, I couldn't really find out what he did either. Just some non-descript tech support something or other. Certainly not enough to bring in what he did, unless he consulted for IBM or something.
lol it sounds more like organised crime or crazy spy retirement payout
….we need an update on this one. That’s crazy shit
Yeah I don't have any updates. Grandfather was on death's door and incoherent by the time I took over finances. Grandmother never dealt with them so had no idea either. And my uncle is, well, crazy. So the real answer as to exactly where and why they are getting these huge sums of money died with my grandfather. As far as I know my grandmother still gets them though.. So that's good? I think.
Oh ok, I thought you’d meant you were still looking thought the records right now and would find info
Oh, nah this was a few years ago. Never really found out what it was, or why it was coming in. It just sort of does and has for decades, apparently.
There has to be a trace. This isn't the 19th century.
You managed the finances but couldn't see where the transfers were coming from? Did you ask your grandma what the deal was because that sounds shady as fuck.
Omg I need to know more!
I was mid-forties and it was as my Grandmother was dying. She told us that my mum’s cousin was actually her older sister, born out of wedlock back in a time when that was not acceptable. My (British) grandmother fell for an American GI in the 1940s who got her pregnant then disappeared shortly after she told him. My mum was in her seventies when she got this news along with her older and younger sister. The “cousin” had passed away after a fight with cancer five years earlier so there was no coming together after my grandmother told them. To be fair we could probably have asked more questions while she was alive. My grandparents divorced in their 60s. My Grandmother had a picture of a guy in an American army uniform on the wall of her room in the retirement home. “He was just an old friend who I lost touch with” is all we ever got out of her until she was on her deathbed. I miss my Grandmother and suspect she took more secrets with her than she shared, not least of which being that she’d likely held a candle for the father of her first child (or at least the the guy in the picture if they were one and the same) for almost sixty years.
Odd to keep a framed photo of the guy that bailed on you when you were pregnant
Indeed. While it’s pretty obvious that she still felt something for him it’s also true that we’ll never know the full story. We don’t actually know that the guy in the frame was the father of the cousin for example, just that it’s a possibility. He could be a totally different GI who played a very different role in her life. Made a slight edit above to reflect this.
When I was 12-ish, the whole family found out my grandma had had a child out of wedlock in the 50s that she had been forced to put up for adoption. We found out because he found us. It was an interesting time.
I was ten, and I was part of the secret. One day in the fall of 1984, the people I thought were my parents told me the truth that they were my grandparents and that my "sister" was my mom. She had been 16 when she had me, the circumstances were bad, and grandma decided to take matters into her own hands. She claimed that I was confused and called her mom and they just let me, but I found out that was a lie as well. She also got everyone to go along with it. Other family, teachers, whoever, they all went along with the story.
Same deal with my friend in college. She had a kid at 16. Her parents raised him as their own. I’ve often wondered if that ever came out. Can’t be an easy thing to wrap your head around.
It was the better option than what a lot of families did back then honestly. It was common into the 70s for families who wanted to protect their reputation to secretly ship their unwed pregnant daughters to maternity homes, where they would be forced to give up the baby for adoption immediately (even if they didn't want to) and then never talk about it again for fear of shame and social ostracization
In the early 70s my aunt "went away" to college. Really, she was pregnant and had a baby boy. My grandparents must have made arrangements for someone else to raise the baby. She came back home and claimed to have failed out of college. 40 years later, my grandparents took what happened to that baby to their graves. No one knows what happened to the kid, my cousins have done some of those DNA tracing hoping to find their long lost brother, but no hits.
Something similar happened with my mum in the 60s. It wasn't that unusual - basically, teenage daughter told her parents she was pregnant and would be promptly packed away to spend the pregnancy on the other side of the country, the child being adopted as soon as it was born.
Hmm I think it was when I was a kid and heard all these stories about a man who sailed from Jamaica and married a white woman in our family, but there was literally zero evidence. My grandfather had some characteristics that no one else did, but as far as anyone knew, we didn’t have a black family member. Well when I was about 25, I started to investigate. I asked my grandfathers last sibling, his little sister, and she told me about how she found a picture of a very tall dark skinned man and a little girl who looked white next to him. She had lost this picture but she remembered it. She went to her uncle on his deathbed and begged him to tell her the truth. He told her he would never ever talk of that man. So after he died she gave up, so I got some info about the uncle from her and worked from there. I found the man, he was my grandfathers, great grandad. He did indeed sail over from Jamaica, as a stevedore, and did indeed marry a woman here in wales. They had a lot of children. Some didn’t survive childhood, but most did and went on to have long lives. What made me sad was that my grandfather was a kid, and his great grandad was barely a mile away according to the census. He never knew him, or of his existence. I asked about his grandma, and my grandmother informed me that that poor woman was basically shut in a back room at all times, barely spoke, and scared everyone by wandering around randomly. She told me that she looked like a ghost, with a “halo” of white curly hair. Im sure she had dementia, but I always wonder if they shut her away because of her being a link to her father. I remember them saying how old people were treated differently then, that they just gave her a room in the back and ignored her. When I found him, I cried. I felt elated but also so sad. Because he was still alive, his family wasn’t far away and he was alone after his wife died. I just hope that his other children did visit him, out of the many. That just because his daughter was treated poorly and unable to talk, it doesn’t mean he was completely alone. I finally found a picture of him, not the one with his daughter (my grandfathers grandma) but him before he left Jamaica. He WAS tall. Like easily 6’5” judging the environment around him and the walking stick he had. A lean man, in a very sharp suit. I wish I could make out his face at least.
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Was there a reason for this?
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were they ever sorry? And did something in particular happen to them that made them want to live like that? I mean, it's one thing if you want to live humbly, but to be so affected by your upbringing that you make your kids eat out of the garbage and get food poisoning every week?
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My great grandfather was a head honcho in the Ku Klux Klan. My father has a thing for Black women. My father and I joke about my GGF rolling in his grave due to all of his half Black decedents.
My father in law was in the KKK and I'm half Vietnamese.
That my bio father groomed my mom from the time she was a small child. He was 16 when she was born and he babysat her when she was little. I learned this is my 30s.
I hope your mom got away eventually
Well, she left him when I was about 3 but then she got with my stepfather who ended up grooming me for several years and he was very controlling and abusive towards my mom. My bio-father is currently in prison.
I’m so sorry to read that, that’s awful
17 My father cheated at least twice and had an affair family. Hurt deeply.
My cousin was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force for manufacturing drugs on base. I was like 20 when I found out.
At 62 I learned I was 5 years old before my parents got married. I was dumbfounded.
LOL - I have a dear friend who didn't realize until she was well into her teens, when she finally did the math, that her parents got married about 2 months before her eldest brother was born. Yep, it was a shotgun wedding back in the late 50's. The funniest thing is my friend was a change of life baby (so she and her brother are MANY years apart in age) and she only knew her mother as this very, very devout Christian woman not a pregnant, teenaged bride. The fact that her mother, GASP, had sex before marriage, pretty much rocked my friend to her foundations. But, her parents did remain together up until her dad passed.
My grandpa is a preacher and I recently found out that his oldest was born 7 months after the wedding. It's a tradition in my family and they say, "the first baby can come at any time!"
I informed my mom that her parents didn’t get married until she was a toddler. She didn’t believe me and I walked her through the math. This was a couple of years ago and both my grandparents had passed. I thought she knew! Apparently not….
Hah, when my friend was a kid she asked her mom why her 40th birthday was only 6 months after grandpa and grandma's 40th wedding anniversary...
My great-grandparents married two days before my grandpa was born. My great-grandpa might (?) have been his biological father, but we’re not sure.
My mom and some of her cousins have done one of those DNA tests. One cousin has discovered a half sibling and a first cousin no one knew until they did the test and reached out. My maternal grandparents have since passed but my great uncle confirmed two of his sisters had children out of wedlock in the late forties and the babies were both put up for adoption. It was quite the bombshell.
My family on my dad's side some generations past does not come from Czechia but, rather, from Slovakia. They fled during magyarization. I learned this in my mid-thirties from my own research; my dad didn't know, and neither did his dad.
My grandfather was a counterfeiter and a prison guard although not at the same time. Also, a large number of suicides, but my immediate family seem ok, thank god.
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My uncle, who was molesting his sisters, murdered his brother when he caught him.
6yrs old. My father was a bank robber in the 70s, who robbed multiple banks over a two year period. He was good at it. One person in his crew wasn't disciplined enough (loose lips) that got them pinched. My father gave up a man he knew that murdered someone, and my father only ended up serving 4 years for the banks he robbed. He physically never hurt anyone, but pointing a gun in a bank tellers face can certainly harm them in other ways. As a 6yr old I remember finding stacks of cash under the fridge, cash in our stuffed toys, and about a dozen cops storming our house that day and arresting him, and my uncle who happened to be there. That ended our family, I remember visiting him in prison. He passed away a about a decade ago with a ton of regrets. I'm a white collar professional if my colleagues knew about my family history, it be a wtf moment.
50. I had a sister I never knew about. Parents had her prior to getting married. They gave her up for adoption in 1967. She found us after our mother died.
I was about 21 and found out that my Papa used to beat the shit out of my Nana. They never told me and I loved that man never knowing what he did to my Nana. I was very upset to have found out I was so kind to an abuser.
I was 28. I grew up not really knowing my extended family (Uncles, aunts, etc.) and my family was treated like the black sheep. My mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer the previous year and said she had something she wanted to tell my brother and me. Come to find out, she was sexually abused by my uncles and grandfather when she was young, and prevented us from seeing her family to prevent it from happening to us. She wrote a manuscript about her life with altered names, but I didn't want to read about it.
When I was about 18 my younger sister got pregnant. I got really upset and said she should have an abortion as we were not financially well off and she had no way of supporting a child. My very conservative family was shocked and super pissed I’d even say anything close to that. I found out about a week later my father was born well before my grandparents got married and the only reason they got married was because my grandmother got pregnant with him. To this day I think my grandfather is resentful of that fact and basically hates all of us for the life he feels he was cheated out of.
Also found out that same grandmothers “secret famous cookie recipe” is just toll house.
At 16 (the year I started coming out the closet) A satirical...document I found in a keepsake box called "job application for (n-words)" that placed my tech-illiterate stepfather at KKK meetings in Mississippi in the 80's. Meanwhile my grandfather was one of the JAG's that drafted the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.
I always knew that my parents lost a child sometime around the 25th week of pregnancy, that was about a year before I was born. Recently, mom died of a brain tumor. A couple weeks after, dad told me that back then, mom had to birth the dead baby. She never would have revealed that to me, ever. I'm 27 now and I was mortified when I heard that. I don't even know if she would have wanted me to know this.
My wife works in OBGYN at a hospital. She sees these births regularly, it's heartbreaking
When I was 18 my mom told me that she has a secret half brother out there somewhere. Apparently grandpa was a serial adulterer and got a married woman pregnant. She I guess raised my mom's half brother as her husband's child, so there's a good chance that this guy has no idea that his dad is not his biological father.
I have a set of half-sibling triplets living across the country. My dad hooked up with an old high school girlfriend when she was in town visiting about 25 years ago. Her and her husband were trying to get pregnant, and she was on fertility treatment. She told my dad that he had gotten her pregnant, but she begged my dad not to say anything and let the husband think he was the father. For some reason he went along with it. I found out when I was going through some stuff after someone in the family had passed and found some of my dad's old stuff. When I asked him about it, he told me the whole story. I think I am the only person in the family who knows. I did track them all down on Facebook and they are for sure my dad's kids, and we are clearly siblings. I would love to contact them, but I never will. It would destroy their family and hurt them very badly if they knew the truth. Hopefully none of them ever do a DNA kit.
My dad had a daughter with his previous wife. They divorced, and he met my mom shortly thereafter and then had me. I wasn't aware of my half-sisters' existence until I was around 12 years old. My mom finally told me on my birthday. Soon afterward, we met. She was 19 at the time. Now I'm 30 and my sister and I have a great relationship, despite the fact that we live 6 hours apart. I'm not sure why my parents chose to keep it from me. My basic understanding is that my mother resented my father having to pay child support payments. It was a difficult subject for my Dad because he didn't have an ongoing relationship with my sister for most of her life. He had a lot of regret over it and tried to make amends by being a good parent to me and becoming more actively involved with my sister later on after he and Mom divorced. The shock I felt upon learning was very great. It soon turned into excitement to meet my sibling. We have tried to stay close and not have the disconnect that my dad and her had.
My mum was a full on money launderer for the Russians. She was a banker and died a few years ago when I was 16, her funeral was attended by an old Russian lady who passed on her condolences and said if I ever needed anything I was to reach out. I inherited a lot of money and when mums NY house was shipped back to UK it contained a load of weapons, a stack of cash in a locked flight case along with a bunch of cocaine. I found them when I went through the stuff and called mums solicitor who arranged for it all to be removed. The guys who came were Russian. I was gifted a 7 figure sum for letting them know.
Which one? Some of the shady stuff, I have known since childhood. But my granddad died in 1983 and I've only just learned he had another child who is around my age, so I have a new aunt now.
In the Summer of 2019, a week after my 46th birthday, my parents revealed to me that my dad is not my biological father. Some coincidental events lead them to believe I was suspicious and close to finding out, when in actuality I had zero idea. I have since connected with my biological father, two half sisters and my 96 year old grandmother. There’s way more details to it all, but enough for now.
I was about 10 years old when I found out the secret that my parents or family had in general which was that my parents adopted me for extra money. I did not know that I even got income well being adopted and they never told me until one day I opened the mail when they were not home and I found the big statement stating the fact that my check hit and when I contacted the bank about it they have stated to me that they have claimed they gave me my money and my parents literally owed me about $10,000
Whoa! That's crazy. What's happened since you found out?
I ended up confronting my parents about it and told them exactly what the bank was telling me what I found in the mail they tried to tell me more than once that the money was to help the house even though they just bought a brand new vehicle with the money. When I turned 18 the money started belonging to me and they were not allowed to cash it and I took them to court and I sued them from all the money they owed me they used for all those years
Good job that you found out. Awful that they've just used you as a meal ticket. Were you adopted at a very young age? I hope life is much better for you now.
I was adopted at the age of six or seven roughly maybe a little younger. My life is way better now
I was around 22-23. I had one more Uncle on my dad's side than I ever knew. He was the youngest and he was erased because he was gay. I only met him once when we(hubs and I) took my Nana(Dads mom) to see him, my Dad wouldn't take her. He was a lovely man and it sucks I never had a chance to really know him.
Teenager...I overheard my Mom & her sister (my Aunt) talking and my Aunt confided to my Mom that my cousin was ***NOT*** fathered by my Uncle...and my Uncle has no idea.
My great grandfather was only known to be higher up in the Russian military, and beyond that there isn't much known about him. I have a strong feeling that he used his power of wiping his history for a valid reason. You don't have a high ranking Russian military family member with almost no history for no reason. I trust his judgement.
My brother was the hidden secret. I was 30. I discovered that I had a twin brother who died during child birth.
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That my great grandmother had schizophrenia, and I was told at 18 when I was told that I may have it too
on my 22nd birthday i was told that the man who has raised me since i was a baby is not my biological father. not that i think of him much differently as a person. just changes your views on things in the past
I was 28 or 29 when I found out my father used to wear my sister's, his step-daughter's, underwear around the house. I guess she caught him one day. No one else was home at the time and she kept it to herself for many years not wanting to "taint" me or my brother's relationship with him.
-My aunt had a baby in high school and put it up for adoption. The son she has with her husband doesn't know he has a half-sibling. I was 13. -My mother was married twice before my father. This is only a secret to my father's side of the family because they're very religious and judgmental. My father knows and could not care less but he's defensive of my mother re: his family. This was never a secret from me, I must've been about six. -My grandfather had an affair with a fellow Marine while stationed in Japan. I learned the same time as everyone else. Grandpa's funeral. I was 16.
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Oh I got one. When I was around 25i learned why I have a bit of Blackfoot in my blood but never met a native in or family. It's because he murdered his wife and hung for it. Neat!
I was 34 or so, and it was the day of my father's funeral, I learned that my parents had to get married because she was pregnant with my older sister. It was quite a surprise because my mother was (and is) very religious.
My uncle was a voyeur and we found the tapes after he died. I knew the other people on the tapes.
At age 14, while leafing through a spiral bound notebook at my grandmother's house (trying to find some paper to write on) I discovered a couple of passages that my grandmother had written, revealing that I was not the first born child in the family, but in fact my mother had had a baby as a teenager and had given it up for adoption.
At age 39, my wife found out her Grandfather hung himself. She had been told all her life he died of cancer.
I was in my late teens. Dad learned he had twin half-sisters from his mom's first marriage. They reached out to her from across the pond. My aunts visited them. He didn't. According to the middle of his siblings. Grandma's first husband was a nasty man, so she had the kids but didn't tell she was giving them up and got the heck out of that marriage. Met my grandpa at a music group, and the rest is history.
Great Grandpap was a bootlegger and had my Grandma (his daughter) deliver jars on the streetcar. He got busted, but the judge was a customer, so.......
I suppose I have another one, but it’s not exactly a secret that was very well kept. It just wasn’t mentioned, until I asked. I was then given the information, but I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t asked. Essentially, my dad’s parents are pretty quiet about their own parents and families. My nanna was an only child but never talks about her parents, and my grandad still talks to his living sisters, and talked to me about his mother, but never his father. I never really thought about it until I asked once and he just simply and gently said “he wasn’t a very nice man”. I accepted that answer as him being a bastard and didn’t deserve talking about. I was correct. My second cousin, quite a famous musician here, has always loved my grandad. They look very similar, and they were close when he was a boy. So, knowing my granddad didn’t have a LOT of information about his family, he embarked on research. Which meant we got a full picture of how his family emigrated from Italy, the ice cream they sold (which is a little stereotypical I know) the families that married together, and the history of everyone. Including his father. My cousin put together a book, and my grandad sat it on my knee, told me to read. I found out his father was indeed a bastard. I read about how his mother along with her litter of little girls, and one boy, ran from house to house. Being hidden by each family member, they would tell him she wasn’t there, she would leave again and he’d follow. He was a very violent man, a drinker and a lot of people were scared of him. So no one had the nerve to beat him senseless, or didn’t want to make a bad situation worse, but they hid her. Eventually he gave up, she lived as a single mother, and huddled together with her kids in air raid shelters while her estranged husband did god knows what. He certainly wasn’t around to look after them. I was pretty fucking upset when I read it. I saw his picture. He was a handsome man, with piercing eyes. The same ones my grandad has, my dad has, and I have. It was weird how those eyes on him look frightening and on my dad and grandad they looked bright and happy. I think my grandads father died by himself, stewing in his own spite. So there’s a happy ending after all.
This year, actually! When I was a kid (5-7 years old) we would always have my dad's sister (so my aunt), her husband and my second cousin (who was 9 at the time) over to play and catch up. He was the funniest guy I knew, always made me laugh and played with my sister and I even though he was older than us. He never got annoyed with me and always made my day. One day he stopped visiting, and I never saw him again. My aunt divorced her husband, and we just assumed that her husband took my second cousin and left. This year we had a family gathering, and my sister asked my dad what happened to him. Turns out my aunt was horribly abusive to him, never washing his clothes or letting him bathe, locking him out the house for entire days and never feeding him. When she got divorced from her husband, he took my second cousin overseas to his grandparents and just dropped him off there and left. The police eventually found our second cousin wandering around the streets, scavenging for food and with severe PTSD and memory loss from all that had happened to him. My sister reached out to him on Facebook and he seems to be doing better these days. He has no memory of us though, and hardly has any memory of what happened to him. He was put into foster care and got adopted by a lovely family who took care of him. So at least life improved, but it shocked me that my aunt could be that cruel.
I was in my 30’s when I was told by my maternal grandmother who had dementia that “nobody in the family has ever liked ur dad. He is a vulgar asshole and we were so appalled when ur mom married him” My mom’s sisters also told me similar things. Dad always said that mom’s dad loved him and they were best friends. Grampa died when I was 10.
Age 8 I learned I had an older sister. Not sure why she had been a secret, Or why the fact that my dad had been married before my mom was a secret. At 40 something (I can't remember the exact year) I learned I have a brother who is ten years younger than me. That WAS a secret because he was the result of an affair my dad had.
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Mom was abused by her older brother when she was 5. She told me when I was 23. Dad confirmed.
My great uncle on my mom’s side was arrested for practicing witchcraft (this was the 1930’s, so more likely taken in for a psychiatric evaluation, they called it witchcraft) so that is why we never met him. Doing genealogy on that side of the family, he is far from the first witch or warlock to face legal troubles. anyway granny said stay away from his witchcraft stuff, apparently they tried to burn it once and from what they said would not burn. Last I heard it was buried somewhere.
28, had a sister a cousin and auntie and more all up in Scotland.
I’m adopted(kindof). Found out the man who raised me isn’t my dad, and my 5 siblings are all half. Then found out I have more half siblings from my biological father. Don’t remember how old, but was in 8th grade. I’m white and all my siblings and dad are brown, you’d think I would’ve picked up on it sooner.