Through at-home DNA testing, I found out at the age of 29 that I was donor conceived. It was shocking to see my DNA relatives list be populated with 12 people to whom I shared about 25% of my DNA with that I had no idea existed just minutes before. It has been a roller coaster ever since with new half siblings popping up frequently and essentially having to onboard them to the family.
My biological father was open to any sort of relationship his donor offspring wanted, having no kids of his own. His parents and extended family also welcomed us very warmly. Unfortunately he actually passed away due to a freak accident before I even spat in the tube, robbing me of any opportunity to meet him. In a way however, I was very lucky. A non trivial number of people reaching out to their newly found bio parent are met with being ignored, blocked, or even cease and desist letters. It makes me legitimately sad for those who have a living bio parent but this person has no interest in any sort of relationship or even trivial contact. Knowing they are out there for the time but the day will come that they will no longer be.
It has been an isolating experience. The parents that donor kids grow up with were often told to never tell their kid, and even when/if their kid finds out, they typically attempt to keep them from telling anyone else. Then to be rejected by someone to whom you share half your DNA with, the half that has become a blank line on the medical questionnaire of your family’s medical history or just the simple question of why you don’t look much like the rest of your family, is just adding insult to physiological injury. The fertility industry peddled lies about anonymity despite knowing exactly how DNA works, that the offspring created will exist with half of the donors DNA in literally every cell of their body. I do not have a lot of sympathy for donors who were unpleasantly surprised that the consequence of donating gametes resulted in offspring and that eventually technology would enable deanonymization.
I’ve personally found a lot of comfort in my brothers and sisters that share the same donor as we are in the same boat. We are all eerily identical in our mannerisms, humor, values, and even choice in partner. But along with this comfort also exists lingering sadness that these people you just recently met, have come to really consider family, and genuinely become fond of, will never have shared growing up together and all the experiences this comes with. There is a podcast called “You look like me” that explores the experiences of Donor Conceived people, that has an episode titled “Memories missed” which very succinctly describes this sadness in those two words. In addition, forging and maintaining relationships as an adult is hard and it takes a lot of work to stay close. To top it all off, the fact that your original family expect you to stay quiet about literally half of yourself, leaves this comfort very bittersweet. It has been a few years since I found out and it really has changed my life and relationship with my parents forever. I have thought about this every day since, and it weighs on me more and more each day.