"Spicy Scott's" NPE Story

Hello, I’m Stacy, the host of Mothers, Lies and DNA Surprises Podcast. Thank you for being here.  

Today “Spicy Scott” is sharing her story for the first time!  

To protect her identity she is choosing to go by “
 Spicy Scott”.  

And here is your trigger warning as suicide is mentioned in her story.  If you or anyone you know is struggling with the thought of suicide please call or text 988, the Suicide and crisis lifeline.

She learns that her mother’s “friend” would end up being her biological father.  She does have some memories of him, but just as her friend, nothing more.  
Spicy Scott provided a lot of care for her mother growing up and what seems like adult roles in their relationship; physically, emotionally and even professionally.  She has struggled with boundaries as she became an adult.

In 2006 her relationship with her mother changed, she continued this difficult relationship while her mother continued to cross boundaries and do inappropriate things. 

Spicy Scott found spiritual healing in 2014, prior to her discovery and continued to find comfort through her NPE discovery.  She also discusses Ancestral Healing, working with a shaman all a part of her healing journey.

She also talks about not recognizing her face during Zoom calls, so many of us within this community can relate to that. 

If you would like to connect with “Spicy Scott” please reach out to me at mothersliesanddnasurprises@gmail.com and I will get you in contact.

Thank you “Spicy Scott” for sharing your story with all of us! 

Music is "Drown in your Lies" by NoxAwake via Pixabay  

Transcript

0:19

Hello, I'm Stacy, the host of Mother's Lies and DNA Surprises podcast. Thank you for being here. Today, Spicy Scott is sharing her story for the first time. To protect her identity, she is choosing to go by Spicy Scott. And here is your trigger warning as suicide is mentioned in her story. If you or anyone you know is struggling with the thought of suicide, please call or text 988, the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline. She learns that her mother's friend would end up being her biological father. She does have some memories of him, but just as her friend, nothing more. Spicy Scott provided a lot of care for her mother growing up in what seems like adult roles in their relationship, physically, emotionally, and even professionally. She has struggled with boundaries as she became an adult. And in 2006, her relationship with her mother changed. She continued this difficult relationship while her mother continued to cross boundaries and do inappropriate things. Spicy Scott found spiritual healing in 2014, prior to her discovery, and continued to find comfort through her NPE discovery. She also discusses ancestral healing, working with a shaman, all a part of her healing journey. She also talks about not recognizing her face during Zoom calls. So many of us within this community can relate to that. If you would like to connect with Spicy Scott, please reach out to me at mothers,lies, and DNA surprises at gmail.com and I will get you in contact. Thank you, Spicy Scott, for sharing your story with all of us. We're going to go by Spicy Scott to the podcast. And I'm excited to hear your story and to share what's led you here to share the story with us for the first time. So, so Spicy Scott, tell me about your DNA surprise, how you found out, and what it's been like since learning your truth. So I was actually researching my family tree on Ancestry. It's so parallel to Catherine's story of the of the MPE group on Facebook. I'd been doing genealogical research of that tree since I was like, it started when I was eight, like age eight. And I'd done some work at the National Archive outside DC. I'd done work at the Minnesota Historical Society. And yeah, I was really deeply into that tree. And I I was in this part of England, which is where my BCF family name came from. So my son and I decided we would go check out where that, you know, the kind of the roots of that line of the tree. And in that context, I joined ancestry to get to see, you know, more information and to find out which village. And then I thought, oh, you know, why not do the DNA test? I'll probably, you know, learn even more, maybe meet some relatives here in England. And so the test came, the results came back that January. So we had gone to my grandfather's grandfather's hometown, or you know, that area. Actually, we ended up going to a lot of villages around this one city looking for gravestones with that family name. And that was, I think that was probably in August, and then I think I did the DNA test in November, and the results came just after New Year's. And I was just starting a new job, and all I know is that what really puzzled me was all these DNA cousin names I didn't recognize, and they came from parts of the US I'd never been to. They the trees all came from a state I'd never been to. And so, you know, I was thinking it's it's there must be a mistake here. But then I kept looking up these DNA cousins and I I finally found some on my mother's side. So then I realized, okay, it's not a mistake. And I I pieced all these family trees from these cousins together and found that I could recognize who was probably my father, and that was a friend of ours from when I was age three and a half to like going on six. And I knew that this was a friend of my mother's. Yes. Okay. Yes. So she was married to your birth certificate father or BCF. Correct. Okay. Okay. And had you ever suspected something was off between you and your raised father? Okay. No. Now looking back, of course, I end up going through all these conversations that might have seemed a bit weird. There was a cousin who at some point had said to me in front of her sisters that I wasn't really, you know, blank family name. And I was six at the time, and I just thought, what? And I asked my mother, you know, what's that? You know, what does she mean? And my mother just said, Oh, she's probably just jealous because you're not growing up there, you're growing up in in Europe. And she kind of came up with this, she didn't explain what she should have explained, basically. What else? There was a conversation years later, like when I was 27. I had a conversation with my grandmother, and I don't remember exactly what she said. I just saw a feeling afterwards, feeling you know, just feeling so sorry to have been born, and that it was so much worse than people feel, you know, luckier the people who can commit suicide because they have a solution to their problem. But, you know, to feel that it was a tragedy to have been born at age 27 was like was so heavy. And you don't remember the conversation, you just remember the feeling. I just remember coming out of her apartment and sitting in the car and just feeling this, like just feeling like I can't, you know, even if I committed suicide now, it wouldn't it wouldn't undo it wouldn't undo or help anything. Yeah. And was this your maternal grandmother or your paternal? No, this is my BCF grandmother. Yeah, and I was actually very close to her. So it was it was a bit strange that we would have such a heavy conversation. And I mean I I called her every week, I talked to her every week, and she you know, she wrote me letters when I was growing up, and yeah, it was just a really supportive grandmother. Yeah. So yeah, it's I guess it whatever it was, it was probably just but not that I remember her ever saying that I wasn't a member of the family. I mean, she she had me read her her mother's diaries. She gave me a lot of you know tree information. So and and yeah, I mean, I she really did treat me like a member of the family. Okay. And as someone who was kind of like the like the next gatekeeper or whatever to the tree. Right, right. But yeah, I was also bringing her more information to add to the tree. So yeah. And uh when when you talked about finding out this in fast forward when you found out you the name of your biological father and you remembered him when you were a young child as your mom's friend, were your mom in BCF married still at that time, when you were that three and a half to six years old, when you knew this man? So actually, I did know that when I was 13, my mother had explained to me that this friend had come to drive her from where she was living in Louisiana all the way to Chicago. And and then I'm not exactly sure, but it sounded, it always seemed like shortly thereafter she suddenly went into labor. And and I always in my mind thought, well, I'm not sure why she went to Chicago, but because she came from Wisconsin, maybe she was heading to her home state. So and since the NPE thing, of course, I've done a little more research and I discovered that in fact my biological father had moved from New York City. I mean, I don't know if he'd moved, but he found a job. That's all I could find. I found on the internet that he suddenly had this job at a college in Chicago, and my mother had explained to me, oh, well, this friend, it was just a friend. I was just, I needed to get out of the marriage, and he was helping me get out of the marriage, and and that was all it was. But when I found that he actually had found himself a job and was going to obviously move from New York City to Chicago, I I just kind of added that link to an email I'd written to her in the PS. And then she answered in her PS, he answered, I guess yes, that they had tried to make things work. So this would this would have been like when I was one year old. I do know that my mother had told me that between my birth and our finally moving to New York when I was three and a half, that she had tried twice, like she had left the marriage twice and tried to, you know, be on her own. And I guess it had failed. And then the third time when I was three and a half, she finally succeeded in in leaving. So that was the separation from her marriage. Was your BCF in your life growing up, even though they were not so my BCF was always my father, although I do remember as a as a baby or my mother, I'm not exactly sure, but I I know the story is that of course I called him by his first name. And that she had to teach me to call him daddy. So but I kind of thought, well, maybe that's normal because as a baby you'd hear your mother referring to her spouse by his first name. Right. But I also don't know if that was something telling as well. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to know. Yeah, and it's also strange, you know, when I was six, my BCF brought me, uh gave me a present, and it was a puzzle of like it was a photograph of himself as a puzzle. I find this very strange, you know. Very of just himself. Yeah, it's just like a passport photo that was enlarged and turned into a puzzle. Interesting. I think it's like symbolically very, very, very fitting. Yeah, that's very interesting. Wow. Okay. All right. So what was your relationship relationship like with your mother before your DNA discovery? So we then we left we left New York City when I was going on six. I was five, and we moved to Europe. Um my mother wanted to sing with opera houses, or an opera house in in Germany, which at the time had a lot of opera houses. And so, so we uh we moved to Germany, and then she was auditioning and and actually found an agent in Vienna, and then it was winter, so we were skiing every weekend, and she was skied into, and after that was paralyzed in the upper back and neck. So starting from that point, I was I took on a lot of care kind of carer type activities, although actually before that I was already grocery shopping, because I do remember uh a friend, another well, actually sort of a romantic friend of hers visiting that is visiting us from New York in Munich and grocery shopping with him and kind of you know arguing, arguing about things like that. And yeah, so I was already grocery shopping, but after that I was I was helping her get dressed and took on more and more of the role of a carer, although I mean obviously limited because I also went to school and um but I do think that in a way the relationship became over time more and more that I was very much you know involved in her supporting her work. So if she had a concert series, I would help with that. Or if she had, you know, someone to the if you know as a as a writer you have to, as a as a writer of music, you have to have your score copied usually, unless your handwriting is amazingly good. So that means you have to proofread. So I was doing the proofreading, things like that. Then she had a radio program in other city, so she would go off there usually, I don't know, frequently, but not not that much, but but somewhat frequently from the time I was 13. So I would just read read the mail to her in the evenings on the phone. And sometimes I'd answer her email. I mean her letters, not email because we didn't have that yet. It was just letters, and I'd tell her who I'd call because this is before the answer machine, so I had to take messages. And you were home alone? Yeah, yes. At 13. Yes, yes, so very, very independent. Very yeah, and I mean, you know, it's like you'd kind of take it as normal because that's what your situation is, and quite honored that I could be doing all this. And so I was I'd have friends over, and it was nice because I could have a friend over, whereas when my mother was around, I wasn't as likely to have friends over. Right. So yeah. So you were at from a young age, you were really a caretaker for her, physically, yeah, professionally, like being her her secretary, her receptionist, her admin, whatever you want to call it. And emotionally, how was the relationship? So yeah, like there too. So I remember when she went through her divorce trying to be supportive, and I but interestingly, she would also, I remember she was really proud to have me like give advice as a five-year-old to her friends. So she had friends and they would like give me some kind of story and ask me advice, and I would just give them advice as well. And she was really proud that I was able to do all that. Oh wow, okay, yeah. You know, many may say mature beyond your age, but as an adult, now looking back, there's a lot there to unpack. Yeah. Yeah. So as you became a young adult, did you continue to have a relationship with your birth certificate father and your mother? Okay. Yeah. So my birth certificate father required at one point that I had to write a letter to him every month. Kind of, it was like sort of like in exchange for my receiving child support. I mean, legally, that's not actually legal. No, that's that's not how it works. Yeah. But but yeah, I know people were trying to encourage me to write because I was growing up in a country where I didn't really speak English, and I all my schooling was in another language, and so he would he would write a letter back, and then he would always include these little snippets from from like magazines, like words of wisdom, and it was kind of that was rather cute. So that was that was the relationship that we had. It was just a correspondence relationship, but I was I would visit every summer. Okay. And he had remarried, so there was like this whole new family, and I was a little bit quite a bit the outsider because I would just be there for one month, and the rest of the year I would not be there. So it was a bit of a strange situation. And yeah, I I mean I enjoyed my I thought my half siblings were really my half siblings, but I only saw them for that one month. They were lots younger than me, but but I enjoyed seeing them the summers that I did see them. Right. And um well, and that's what I was gonna ask. Is so you were your mother's only child? Yes, and then your birth certificate father remarried and had more children. Right. Okay, okay, yeah, I that would be hard as as children to only see each other for a month, a year, and not even on a weekend because you were on in different countries at that time, right? Yeah, that's right. Okay, yeah, and so you continue having a relationship with your mother, like we said, as you were growing up. Was there any what kind of a relationship was it? Was it a healthy relationship? Was there a Yeah, no, I mean it became more and more became especially burdensome. Like in my early 30s, I would come back from work and my mother would call and she would always have me call her back because I don't know, you know, the phone calls were expensive, and she felt that I was in a better position to to like maybe I I don't know what the excuse was, but I mean she was struggling financially for most of the time. And yeah, I mean, she would just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I had to make dinner and eat. But if she heard me cooking, like if she heard me kind of utensils in the kitchen, she would be really offended. So yeah, that was that was really that was, I mean, I really was not happy because I needed to be able to cook and eat and also get to bed on time. And it'd be like 11 o'clock at night, and she was still upset that I would be trying to cook something for myself. So I remember telling a telling a friend, I was really not very good with boundaries, but he just said, Oh, well, you know, you just tell her that you'll have your phone calls on like I don't know, like Tuesday morning or something. So I did this, you know, I actually like figured out a good time that I would give her an hour or two, and we would have this weekly phone call. And that actually worked quite well. So yeah, she did respond quite well to to um having those boundaries that was good for me because then I I was able to use my evenings for other things. And yeah, and because where did you live? Not you must not have lived close to no, so I yeah, I was living in Washington, DC, and she was living in Munich, but some of the time she would also be in New York, so half the time she was in Manhattan. But yeah, it was it was yeah, boundaries were really a problem. So yeah. And did she ever remarry? No, no, no. I mean she she would date and she had you know the longer term relationships, but never never moved in orinary or anything, so tell me once once you found out your DNA surprise, your NPE status, what did your relationship look like then during that discovery period with your mother? Oh, so really actually 2006 is when my relationship with her changed because she had just gone too far in and you know, I I guess there was a boundary she crossed, and it was suddenly too much. I'd already, you know, I'd already been to two Jungian analysts, and they had both said that my mother was like a like a you know, like a case books study of narcissism. And the second one, when I told I told him what she was like, he he would sometimes just start laughing and he would be taking notes and just it was it was kind of like he thought it was just amusing because she sort of ticked all of these boxes like with major tick boxes, I mean ticks or whatever. But yeah, so yeah, I think what made it made him laugh especially is my mother had a had a friend who was a who literally was a princess. And apparently that's like that's very typical of a narcissist to have celebrity friends and royalty as friends. And yeah, he thought that was so funny. Yeah. So at my mother's funeral, the princess's daughter, I I had her sit next to me at the funeral. She would have approved. Wow. All right. So in tw in 2006, something happened, a boundary, you you finally to a point. So I finally really had to had to get my head around you know this narcissism thing and what to do about it. And I bought all these books about walking on eggshells and what to deal about about narcissists in your life. And I yeah I I did not cut her off which probably would have been in many ways the easier thing to do but it also seemed really impossible to do. So instead from 2006 onwards it was just very kind of a difficult tightrope walk of having phone calls but not having too many and always keeping boundaries and being careful what I said because if I said too much about my work, my mother was the kind of person who would call my boss at home even though I never called my boss at home. Well she would you know yeah or she would show up at my workplace and unannounced so I had to be very careful about that kind of information and I decided not to tell her where I lived so you know maybe maybe the town but not anything more than that. So really it was kind of a difficult relationship. I mean it was hard before that because it was hard on me because she was already very controlling but but maybe it was maybe it was I don't know in a way it was even harder because you know it's having to be very careful and there's always still a bit of fear you know because you just don't know with someone like that my mother could easily know more than she's letting on and then she'll do something behind my back and then I'm the one who's having to deal with the the crisis that ensues so okay so you I I there's lots of thoughts going through my head and I'm thinking of of the toxicity of of being your mother's conf it sounds like growing up you were your mother's confidant you were her best friend you were her you were you were parenting her it sounds like really I mean is that true a true statement yeah yeah I would say that that's okay that's true. And then you finally got to the point that you somehow realized this was too much and maybe that was that friend who said this is too much and so you you you put that distance between the two of you so then in 2019 when you found out did you approach your mother and ask her yes okay yes oh yeah I did let her know about these DNA cousins I I think you know my feeling was that she she should she should explain herself that was I mean not that you can make a narcissist do anything but I felt by telling her what I was finding that that gave her an opportunity. So so when she came to England then we met at a nice fancy hotel and she told her story I you know my sense is that it wasn't the full truth and I I'm not really sure what all she's hiding if that makes sense. She she did say something about his having this is my biological father had written her a love poem. I did actually find the love poem on my last visit to I had put all of her stuff into another apartment because I had to give up her apartment and then I had to give up this next studio apartment and put stuff into a storage. But as I was going through stuff I came on I came upon this collection of all the love poems that were written to my mother I don't know I find it rather amusing I mean I do you know I did always hear about her childhood when I was growing up so I do understand the context out of which she came into the world so to speak I mean the the need for for this love was so you know so strong that that people someone like her would would probably really need to have a whole collection of love poems I don't think I have I don't have anything like that. Yeah so yeah and then also she had mentioned that she was concerned that when he passed away whether it was suicide and that she'd written to someone who knew him quite well and that she had written back and then my mother went ahead and and produced that correspondence and gave it to me so to I guess to give evidence that what she was saying was was correct. I was you know I was still curious like you know why how what exactly happened when he died so I tried to get his death certificate but I couldn't because I'm I don't have him on my birth certificate. And New York State that's the law and DNA doesn't really make a difference so yeah I mean I think what might make this interview a bit you know unusual for you is the fact that I discovered spiritualism here in England around 2014 I guess. So friends of mine two different friends were telling me you know you're living in England you're so lucky you can just pop into a spiritualist church. So okay well why not? Why not so I would go to these they they meet twice a week in pretty much all across England and basically a medium will travel to to work for a service and they they might come to the same church twice a year but never more than that because really the idea is that you're you're giving messages to strangers and they they don't get paid for their work. They do get reimbursed for travel costs and they're given a cup of tea that's it yeah very strict in England. I know mediums in the states get a lot of it they earn a lot of money but um yeah so I was going to the spiritualist church and I my son came along too and we just thought it was really entertaining because it is very entertaining. It's very strange you know to watch what's going on for the first time especially until you're used to it but I kept going you know you know like for years like from 2015 or 14 just kept going because it was so interesting and then I started getting messages from my grandparents and this is my my birth certificate grandfather and grandmother and what happened at some point probably like 2017 I had someone coming through I didn't I couldn't place and the strange thing was he kept saying and he kept coming through with different mediums and it was always the same thing. I have this gentleman he's pacing up and down pacing up and down and smoking and and he's telling me that he wasn't a very good father can you take this person and I thought no my father's alive you know my father doesn't smoke and he doesn't pace and he's alive and I don't know who this person is so he kept coming through but then I think after a while he don't he stopped but the funny thing was that you know after the NPE thing I thought wow I now might know who it was wow and since the discovery have you gone back and been able to connect with him so yeah so I was in a development circle and in that context too you can sort of work I mean different people will bring through messages but so he brought through a message where he described a walk I'd gone on with my son. We walked from a village in Italy to Austria and it you know it was an all day ordeal we started at six in the morning six in the evening this is late October the sun was setting at 6 p.m and we had to go down the mountain into Austria which I knew was the north side it would be totally dark and it was very steep and I was just actually really quite scared and I remember just sort of quietly inside myself you know praying to my ancestors to help I mean this is how much the spiritualism had taken over my my my being like praying to my ancestors but my mother's mother came from the Alps and I knew that she and her grandfather had done this walk so we wanted to do this walk as well so I was hoping that maybe my great grandfather or whatever he would be my great great grandfather or maybe she would would help us but the funny thing is in the message actually my my biological father was describing this walk and and said you know I helped I helped you over that mountain that last mountain so I thought that's powerful yeah that's powerful all right so during the this discovery you were able to get some answers from your speaking of which right so that was the other thing a message came through because I wanted to know how he died and I couldn't get information I couldn't get the justification sure enough someone came through with a message from him and he described that his death was it was very quick and it was very painful in the chest and neck so I think it was a heart attack. Okay. Yeah but anyway that was also amazing that someone you know brought through that information and not not too much actually because it's it's actually a typical in England that's a typical way for many mediums to to say I have a gentleman here and they might describe him but then they'll also say this person passed and they might then describe the ailment and many mediums will actually be able to feel certain things. It was interesting too I was wondering about my this new ancestral tree I discovered there was a great right the great grandfather the same one who has this genealogist who's descended from the oldest son his father had left the family and disappeared and everyone thought he had passed away well it turns out he had left and he had remarried and the steneologist found a whole new set of relatives and I was just thinking about the trauma in the family that was left behind with this unresolved problem. And so one day I had I again I was in church and a medium came over and they they actually called out the family name and and then the message was that yes, that everyone was really traumatized by that. So a lot of my work trying to get through this trauma that I was experiencing from my MPE was on the one hand I was doing identity oriented psychotrauma therapy online because it was the pandemic time. And what I liked about it was that I guess people resonate with each other. I don't know if other therapy groups do this but the way that that trauma therapy works is you basically make a statement and then you pick people in the group to represent a word in that statement. So you have three people and then and then they just resonate but it's so nice because I was finding that people were actually you know describing how I felt so and I think you know it's it's so important because I I grew up not really not being allowed to to feel feelings because it was not really convenient for my mother. But she actually really did believe that if I were unhappy for too long that that was going to hurt me. But that's what she said anyway when I was growing up was I couldn't be sad because it was going to hurt me or I couldn't be angry. So I had to like find out what it was and then explain it away. Like if I could explain it to myself then that problem would go away but I think as a consequence it's just sometimes it's just really hard to be in touch yeah with feelings when you've been doing that since childhood. So the therapy was just great to see these people you know actually feeling what I was feeling that was very confirming especially given that I couldn't even recognize my my reflection I couldn't recognize myself in the in the zoom yeah yeah and we talked a little bit about that before we started recording is you know we hear so much within this community people who who will say I don't recognize the reflection in the mirror but you you really touched on how how big of an impact that was for you to be on these Zooms during a shutdown and seeing your your picture or your your face on that zoom and not recognize them yeah yeah even in those moments and it's very I was like I was thinking you know my face is so long I don't remember my face being that I mean it was that's sort of yeah like just a really long high forehead and it just everything about it just seemed so alien to me. But I mean I did eventually integrate that I think but then there was one little relapse and that really spooked me because I thought oh you know I thought I was over this and but yeah that was just a short little little strange relapse. So the IOPT was you was helpful obviously the spiritualism was helpful. I did also do a tiny bit of shamanic ancestral medicine work but just one session one session with the shaman so there is Daniel four I think it's like spelled like the number four okay and he has a book on ancestral healing and he also has workshops you can go to in person. I haven't done any of this stuff because it's expensive and we moved to this part of England that's just I mean the house is out in the country and anyway so I haven't really been earning much money at all. So yeah anyway so I but I did get his book I read the book and I decided I wanted to work with with a shaman and I thought you know I went to the website and there were some people if you could find a shaman that was in training you could get a much reduced rate. So I wrote to them and I gave some geological areas because they sort of want to know like the ethnicities and the geo geological ancestral origins. And then I also said I wanted someone who would work with wood because my biological father had designed furniture so that would be out of wood and also like the like the state that he came from in the US has a lot of forests and I did my mother did find some of his artwork on the internet and sent me what she found and yeah there's some drawings of you know lots of trees so I just got wood. So they found they found a shaman in I think the state of Washington and she also works with wood. So we met we met and it was really really really interesting. So you basically your your family tree goes into the four directions. I don't know if you've ever done any Native American medicine but Native American medicine also works with four directions and also the Celtic the Celtic Christian church also but so I don't know why why there are these like overlaps between Native American because I was studying some like as a birthday present to myself I bought several books on on Cherokee medicine and yeah just the Cherokee language this is back oh probably like 2010 and then strange enough I ended up playing harp at a at a Celtic Christian church a little bit further south I mean in the south of England not this part of England but and there again you have the four directions so Native American medicine with the north and the south and the east and west and then the Celtic church. But with so with shamanic healing you again you have these four directions the the line behind you extending back from you is your father's father's line and then to your to my left is his mother's line maternal line and then to your front is your mother's maternal line and then to your right is your maternal father's line and uh so I had to go into each of these lines and and try to diagnose numerically which I couldn't do I couldn't come up with a number I just was getting colors and so my father's father's line was purple. And I was quite curious because for me purple I kind of associate that with healing but I also wonder to what extent that also means that there's trauma. Yeah and then on his maternal side I was getting a lot of green and orange and kind of a bubbly texture to it. But so I was trying to give numbers and feeling really like lost because I don't know what kind of number do you assign to them to the color purple. Right. What number do you assign to green and green and orange and and then I I thought there'd be a lot of trauma on my mother's mother's side but surprisingly it wasn't it wasn't that unwell at all I was quite healthy. I mean it wasn't extremely healthy but it was healthier it was the healthiest at that point and so that was interesting. And then my mother's father's side was actually the healthiest so then you had to I had to I mean it just that was my perception so then the next the next thing to do was to go into the healthiest line and meet your your like your healer guide. So I did and it was just amazing. So I met this amazing healer guide I mean he was just phenomenal if anyone wants to pursue it it's it's an interesting yeah I'll have to look into that yeah to go into yeah just a question that I thought of as as you were talking so your biological father passed did he ever marry and have any other children no and you know I'm I'm I sort of you know keep my membership it's so expensive but I keep the membership just in case some DNA person shows up I also joined my heritage because my mother had a mystery a mystery grandfather actually in her case so her mother's father was a mystery person. So my mother had you know no problems with doing a DNA test. So she did the DNA test and then sure enough through my heritage we were able to find like a first cousin once removed for her and he so yeah we were able to find out her who this grandfather was and my mother felt actually very relieved I think really I think she was she seems to have always she seemed to have always had concerns that maybe her grandmother had been raped or some kind of horrible traumatic story. I mean we don't really know what the story was just because this person was from another village not far from my great grandmother my grandmother's village doesn't mean it there wasn't a rape but somehow my mother felt like oh oh this is nice because I guess she thought maybe you know maybe it was some strange foreigner going through or some old person and this individual was the same age so she felt good about that. So I gave her some I actually connected with a DNA cousin from that side of the family but I'm not really able to make a tree other than I know that I know his full name, and I know that somewhere on his mother's side, there's another family name just because of all the trees in ancestry. So a lot of people did emigrate to America who also descended from his ancestors. And so there's sort of like names that just keep reappearing in all these trees. And that's all I know. And unfortunately, this little village, which is not far from Cortina, like if you've heard of the Olympics in Cortina Dampet, so it's a little village, it's right, like I don't know, like a one-hour walk from Cortina. But this little town in Italy, the the names are so common in that village, like there must be so much intermarriage or something, I don't know. That you need to have a second name to add to your last name, which they call a patronome. But obviously the preternome, I don't know, like how do you find out? He ended up in Switzerland, his great-grandfather, and obviously didn't bring the Praternome with him to Switzerland. And so I have no idea how to get that information. But but anyway, we have met and we've met like twice actually. So she came to Munich, went to a concert of my mother's, and did some, I don't know, spent some time in Munich, not too much. But then I went to Italy and visited with her and Friuli and had a wonderful time. And then she she and her husband took me all the way to their valley, which is another valley. It's just south of the valley where my great-grandfather came from. And I got to meet her relatives on that side that she was fairly sure would be our common relatives, and they were really lovely people. And yeah, that was lovely. So I did connect with my mother can my mother was communicating with this first cousin once removed who lives in Switzerland. I haven't really yeah, I haven't really connected with him. But yeah, so much, you know, so much for the ancestry. But yeah, there's another there's another MPE story there. My grandmother had already passed away, so she didn't actually get to have that MPE experience. It would have been her father. Okay. That she had already passed away at 106. Wow. Wow. So were you able to have many conversations with your mother once you found this? Or was there you you had talked about you sat down with her? Was it a a one and done? Like we're not going to talk about this again, or was she open and as honest as she could be during this whole process? Or did you feel yourself pulling away? Like were you able to get from her as much as you would have liked to have gotten from her? No, because I I really felt that she was, I felt she was hiding something. And I also didn't know to what extent, you know, maybe I mean, it seemed to me the more I did my own research that there was much more of a relationship there than she was willing to let on. If I brought her the like when I showed her that, oh look, you know, he he he got this teaching position at this college in Chicago, then it was only then that she admitted that that he was willing. And then she explained that the reason he was looking to move there was for her because she wanted to move to Chicago and she wanted to study with this composer who lived there, but then that composer moved to New York. So I gather that that Chicago probably didn't happen, and that's that's why it was just always back to New York, and then and then we lived in New York. Some of the strange things that I didn't understand suddenly were beginning to make sense. Like this composer, this composer's widow was really upset that I went to law school. And I always thought that was very strange. Like, why would the widow of my mother's composition be angry that I went to law school? Yeah. But my mother was telling me that she was really angry because I should have staked in the arts. But of course, it would make sense that since they were friends of my biological father, who was an artist, that that would make sense. No. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what my mother was trying to tell me there, but the bits and pieces. Yeah. Wow. So then after the discovery, and and and you had said you had kind of pulled away from her in 2006 anyway. Right. How did it look then going forward and until I know that she has passed? So leading from discovery until she passed, what did your relationship look like? I I did get the sense that the MPE thing was somehow was bothering her. She I did get the sense that she wasn't going to really tell me the whole story. Her focus was always on, you know, why why she had to leave the marriage. That's all she cared about. Was like, I kept hearing about how bad that marriage was. But for me, that was nothing new because I'd been hearing this stuff when I was a child, you know, all through my youth. So it was like, oh, you know, why am I hearing this over and over again? But it made sense that maybe for her, I think maybe her problem was the fact that she had been an adulteress, right? And then I was I was in the ill, you know, I was the result of. Yeah. And that's that's that's the only thing that really concerned her. Whereas for me it was more just trying to know more about this other side of the family. And it seemed that either she never did know him well enough, or or possibly there were just bad stories that she didn't want to talk about. Like maybe they were I mean, who knows? Were they narrow-minded people? Who knows? Like maybe they would have not approved of her. Um I I yeah, I have no idea. I do I do remember my biological father as is as a very quiet person. So I don't remember hearing his voice really. I just remember that he was tall and very quiet and gentle, and I remember that he, you know, the two the two times we were visiting that like stick out in my memory is that he served us, you know, food and the that everything, you know, was very nice and he had nice paintings on his walls and just very peaceful, but yeah, that's all really just very kind of a quiet individual. But no, I haven't it doesn't look like he's ever married. There are there's a photograph of some I think he had some kind of partner near the end of his life, like maybe maybe at the time that we left for for Europe, but maybe maybe he met her then and but they didn't marry. Um you know, the other strange thing was he came to Europe, and that was a funny story too. My mother's always told this story that she was giving a tour in Munich and she saw this friend of hers from the back, and she stopped the bus and and called out, called his name. He turned around, and then she asked him to join her tour on the bus, and then invited him to join us for dinner that night. So he did come over. We had all sorts of other guests that evening. So I was helping to entertain all these different people. There was a chalice from England, and there were there was a couple from from Louisiana where my parents had lived when they were married, where my father still lives, actually. Yeah, so they were there, and then I remember I I remember that he wanted to take photographs of me. And so my mother asked him, asked me actually to to to dance for him. I know psychologically people think that's really weird, and maybe it is. I don't know. I don't know. Well, and it and it it it actually is one of my questions I thought of as you were just speaking about him coming over for supper, is and in obviously unless you read it somewhere, you don't know for sure, but that maybe answers that question is did he know you were his? I have no idea. And based on what that story you just said, there may be a chance that he did or suspected it, or yeah. And you know, when you were talking about your mom and her more or less telling you stories about it, a couple of things did come to my mind. Like, is she well, okay, full disclosure. As we know, with narcissistic tendencies, they kind of live in a different world anyway. But one thing was shame. Is was she so full of shame? Because, like you said, she was unfaithful to her husband, regardless of what type of marriage it was. She had that shame that she then had to live with every day because she had a child with him. But also, and not knowing anything more than what you have shared, could there have been this longing for like this was the love of her life, and and she had a connection with your biological father, and they never like made it work and what for one uh reason or another, and she was always pining over him. I don't know, you know, those are the two thoughts that came to my mind as you were talking about her, but also as narcissistic tendencies go, it's always about them anyway. So, right? Yeah, there was I do, you know, it's funny. I do remember after the divorce, still living in New York, there there were there were a couple people that she really was interested in and she would have liked to have married. And I remember as a little five-year-old asking her, what about this one friend who was my biological father, not having any idea. Yeah, and I remember her saying, Oh, he's an artist, and artists have problems with money, and he has trouble with money. Oh, yeah, and that was the reason why. But so when it came to the MPE discussions, she did say that, but I also don't know to what extent, you know, things are made up there because people have these notions that if you have a child, you're supposed to make up these stories about how you and their biological father were you know in love and blah blah blah, and all these crazy stories. I don't know. I have a hard time with that, but um, but she she did say that, oh, you know, he would have been a fantastic father for you. And oh, he you know, he gave you that that book, you know, where the wild things are. So, which even had a little record with it. And you know, the people on IOPT, of course, jump jump on that because where the wild things are, you know, you you put your your anger on a distant island that's so far away that you have to travel through years and months and days until you get to this distant island, and then you get to act out your anger, and then you take this boat all the way back to your room. But yeah, it's just kind of funny. It's a funny thing that that book happens to like go along with this whole suppression of feelings. But uh but my mother said to me that my BCF had never given me any books when I was little, and but but that my biological father had. And yeah, I don't know, but I also don't know if these stories are just made up because of this like sense that you have to make of this funny fantasy thing. On the other hand, you know, the the love poem was there, right? Yeah. And yeah, the fact that he came and visited us, yeah, I think he he must have uh wanted to see us, and then then he got back to you know, his father had passed away just a month or two before he came to Europe, and then literally within weeks of his going back to New York, he passed away. Wow. Yeah. Wow, okay. And your your BCF, is he still alive? Yes, yeah. Okay, and does he know? So I I told him. I felt I had to. My mother kept telling me that he had been telling her, like over and over again, telling her that she should tell me. But here's the strange thing, she did not want me to tell him. So I thought that was very weird. It didn't make any sense to me. I mean, if it was true that he was telling her all the time to tell me, then he should be happy that I would tell him. Oh, you know, I know now. Yeah. So yeah, so I I wrote an email, and then his email back was that he had always known, and that the story was that my mother had gone off to New York and to to have therapy and came back pregnant. Oh so as far as he was concerned, that wasn't his child. But yet he can he paid child support and had you for a month every year. Yeah, and he he put me through college. Wow. And and then he he also helped me financially during law school. So I took out loans for law school, but he did send me a check to to cover my rent during law school. Wow. And um actually just was always really you know supportive of like going. Well, he was he himself was a lawyer, so I think it was probably a little bit fun, actually. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and I think that speaks volumes to him and his character, that you know, it may have led to the end of his marriage, but he still was a a man who took care of a child that believed it wasn't his. And he was right, but that you know, not many men would do that. So that speaks to who he is. Good for him, good for you to have that. Yeah. So my next question is what advice would you give to others who are struggling with their mothers because of our DNA surprise, like we we have? I think I think it is to to uh to have to accept that their perspective is going to be so different from ours. That's going to be probably going to be very disappointing that I mean for me anyway, it was just um disappointing to realize I'm never really going to know. You know, I'm never gonna because she's passed away, my father probably doesn't know much. And there's only so much research I can do on Google. I mean, I could I was able to find some patents. But yeah, the frustration that was my mother, I'm never really, you know, there's no capacity to appreciate or even have yeah, the slightest notion of what I need. So it's it's just only about her story. And you know, even I was with her the last two months of her life, or on the clock practically. And her her question was always, maybe she should have stayed married. And I just thought, what? You know, she really didn't and it was almost like she thought that maybe that would have made me happy if she acknowledged that maybe that was her mistake, that she had left the marriage. Well, and it that seemed to come up a few times in even our discussion, and and maybe it it sounds like that's one of her biggest regrets, which is as we know, you shouldn't stay in a marriage if you're not happy for whatever reason. But she she gets it's like she had a lot of guilt there for that alone, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that was something I always went through every time I came back from my one month of visitation, I'd have to go through hearing my mother talk about how bad the marriage was and why she left it. And if she had stayed, she was, you know, she envisioned herself being in that cemetery. She had to drive, drive past every day that she'd be in that cemetery. And uh it's a hard place to put a child. And then, you know, I was sort of wondering, like she, oh, then she really, really started complaining about my BCF even more than she had done previously. I mean, he after the NPE thing, he turned into this monster, and and I just felt it was incredibly unfair, you know, after the revelation to turn this person into a monster when it was really incredibly kind and generous. That, you know, either either she deceived him, in which case that's really bad, that she deceived him into thinking that I really was his child, and it's possible that that was part of it. Or, you know, maybe I was always just his child, but he decided to you know accept me as his own. And then, yeah, I mean, at some point she she then did acknowledge that actually that it was important to be really grateful. But again, I sort of also felt like it, I don't know, like we're sort of in a way, we're sort of victims in all of this. I mean, we're we didn't have any agency in any of this, and all of a sudden it's my job to keep things secret, or it's my job to to be grateful when in a way part of me is also thinking, why couldn't someone have told me sooner? Yeah. I spent a lot of time sort of thinking to myself, oh, you know, when would have been a good time to have found this out? Yeah. And uh too. Yeah. And then thinking about, okay, so when I was 13, this and this and this was happening in my life. And then I actually realized actually there was a time my mother was having this weird, like revealing, talking to me about my birth. And she didn't actually go so far as to say that that I was not my father's daughter, but she did say to me that when my father came to Chicago, that this is what she tells me anyway. She said that he came to Chicago, Azar at the hospital with me. This was like a day and a half after I was born, and had stormed off saying that I wasn't his child. So my mother, I guess, thought that that's all she had to say, and I was supposed to draw conclusions from that. Or is it possible? Because all I drew from that was, oh, you know, their marriage was really that bad, right? And he was that mad at her. Right. And and I didn't draw the conclusion that I wasn't his child, it was just that it was a nasty thing that he said, right? Yeah, you were a child. How could you even imagine anything different? Yeah. So she was maybe it was her way of releasing some of that guilt off of her shoulder and to tell you, and she could say, Well, I did tell you, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it she never mentioned that conversation, but that conversation did of course come back to me. It's like, yeah, you know, that was the right time. That was like I was 13, just past my 13th birthday. That would have been a good time to have been told. Yeah. Yeah. And then that's really that's it, really. I don't think she's otherwise ever tried. And then, you know, this is another irony in my life. My the summer after my first year in law school, I clerked. Law professor. And can you imagine what my subject was that I had to research? It was comparative law. So I had to research like all kinds of countries, like as many countries as I could, their legal systems defined how their legal system dealt with this issue. And the issue was, and this is back in 1990, 1990. And the issue was whether a child from artificial insemination had the right to know their biological father, and at what age. Wow. And in most countries, it was always the same age. And I'm trying to remember if it was 14 or 15, but it was it was either 14 or 15. And it's just so strange looking back that I happened to get this. Yeah. That is that's beyond irony. That's that is there's something at work there. Isn't that crazy? Who would have known? Who would have known? Then after MY MPE, I even called that a law professor. And she remembered me, but it's funny, she did not remember that topic. I mean, she has published so many articles, I mean hundreds of articles and books. She didn't remember that at all. Wow. Yeah. That's very interesting. And and good for you for reaching out to her to share the irony of it. Yeah. Wow. Is there anything else you would like to share or want others to know about you, your story? Oh, well, I guess, you know, the other positives I've really enjoyed working on my new tree just because it's a way of studying history from you know the perspective of just regular human beings as opposed to the way we tend to study history, of more like you know, the rulers of leader rulership or whatever, kings and queens and wars and things like that. I mean, the wars to come into the lives of our ancestors is the worst they actually fought. But you know, I I suddenly have Quakers and my new tree has Quakers and probably Mennonites, I'm not sure, but it looks like that as well. And then of course there's a bit of overlap with with my two fathers. They both have a lot of this the Scotch-Irish background, and so just trying to study more of these other directions in American history has been really fun. Yeah, so it can be a really exciting journey, and and I guess sometimes I just like I didn't really continue the shamanic healing, although I kind of think it'd be fun to do more of that. I also found myself, you know, I because I couldn't really talk to my biological father, I decided to do his astrological charts. I was looking at his chart and comparing his chart to my mother's chart. There's a lot you can do actually with, you know, deceased. I didn't realize this, but like, you know, with deceased family members, you can look at their chart. I mean, I I'll never have their time of birth, but you can do all the other stuff. And it was fascinating. Like both my biological parents have the same weird phenomenon of, you know, Venus and Mars being tightly conjunct. I don't know if you're astrology, then in astrology they sort of know what that is. But like, so if you have two planets at the time of your birth and they're absolutely together as projected onto the earth, that's a tight conjunction, and they both have that, which I think is very strange. And I also found myself learning even more astrology because I was studying these new charts. And uh yeah, it was just fascinating because looking at my father's chart, this is the biological father, his son is in a place in my chart, which is where where the hidden things are. Oh, so my father's son sign is the sun is exactly in that spot, which is where things are hidden from me. And I thought that was just amazing. Fascinating, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'll have to look into that because I'm very curious now, and with with my my dad as well. And I think when we're missing something, so so both of our cases where our our biological fathers are deceased, when we find out, I think so many of us grasp at anything we can to learn as much as we can about this stranger who is half of us, and whatever that looks like, you know, I have seen multiple mediums myself trying to connect with him. And I have from his his family, his surviving family, I I take notes and I ask just random questions about different things. And I think however that looks like for each of us, I mean, it it becomes an obsession for a period of time because we want as much as we can get. Um did you find that at some point you were pulling away from it? Because I suddenly felt like I just had had enough of it, and I yeah, I just almost like I just didn't want to be dealing with this anymore. And it was like time to move on, and then the things that pull me back in are actually Facebook, like I still get the feed from the MPE group, and then that unfortunately sort of like I end up like commenting on things, and that kind of draws, and I find myself thinking, oh, you know, maybe I should quit this because it keeps pulling me back into it, and I I've kind of moved on from it, but I don't know. At the same time, I do think it's kind of a journey, you know. Maybe maybe we we need to have a break from it, but it yeah, it's also good to stay, stay with it, really. I mean, I I do feel like I I do feel like I'm a totally different human being. I don't know if other people have that same experience, but I really feel like so many things that maybe are important to the rest of the world just are not anymore because to have gone through that kind of shock to your foundations of who you are. I I don't feel like I need to be successful at anything that I do. And I feel, you know, so many people are on this happy track of doing things that make them feel happy and successful and having to publish. I mean, I write poetry, and I part of me is thinking, yeah, I I should do what everyone else is doing, I should try to find a way to publish a pamphlet or something. The other part of me is like, no, no, no, I don't need to do anything. Like, no, I really don't need to succeed at anything. And um yeah, and I and and I agree. I I've said it recently more than I have before that we're people who aren't in this world look at us and nothing has changed, right? So we look the same, we we walk the same, we are the same on the outside. On the inside, I am a completely different person for a number of reasons. One of which, most importantly, is because of this discovery, but I've done a lot of work to heal through therapy and all in surrounding myself with community that I agree, like my whole life shifted internally. And I am, as you were, my discovery is 2019, so you know, we're a ways into it, it doesn't consume my everyday like it did the first I don't know. I I think that for me it was about year three, it shifted quite a bit, but I think and the other thing that I tell people is when you are raised and know your parents from day one for the entirety of your life, you know everything, you were raised with everything that you needed to know about your mother and your father, and and we see it a lot within the adopt and adopt adoption community, is they also don't have that, and so they're instinctively, we all want to know where we come from, and so I found out at the age of 47, and I think about that first 47 years, I lost out, and so the you spend the next same amount of time trying to figure it out, and I don't think there's an end to it because no how could there be? Even our fathers are are passed on and our grandparents aren't around, and yeah, there's no one there for the family. I mean, I also feel like I guess this is weird, but I was 55 and I just felt like ah, you know, it's too late now to be. And I also felt like, oh, you know, all these decisions I made in my life were based on wrong information. Yeah, it really felt like it had nullified my life. And I felt like I really wanted someone to give me another life, like another incarnation. Yeah. And then the question, of course, is what do I do with the rest of my life? And you don't really know how long you're gonna live when you're 55, or now I'm I'm 62, going on 63, and so then I just kind of find myself looking for the things that I've done in my life that I've really enjoyed and that are meaningful to me and that I enjoy now. Like I still really enjoy teaching, and and I'm actually I'm running a poetry workshop now, co-hosting it. The strange thing that happened was when my mother got sick, and then ever since she's passed away, I just don't have any drive, or I almost feel like I've lost my ability to write anything. Creative or even the the desire to do so. But oddly enough, I'm I'm sort of trying to stay in that community just because it is community and co-hosting this workshop. But it's good because I mean, I am writing a couple poems a month now just because of the workshops. And yeah, that's I'm not sure what's what's exactly, you know, obviously with having lost my mother, there's obviously stuff going on there and and not really grieving, but maybe somehow at some point I'll have to grieve, or maybe that's part of the grieving, or maybe yeah, I don't know. But you're absolutely right. It's it's just yeah, that that sort of interesting question of so almost asking my my soul what you know, what is the meaning of this incarnation? That I if we chose this, why did I choose this? Or if we didn't choose it, you know, why was it chosen for us? But I mean, I am so grateful that I had my BCF. I mean, he's not my my half-brothers complained about him because he he's not that easy a person, but for me, he was just really actually very supportive. And in in some ways, we've really understood each other very well. And I was looking at my chart with his chart versus my chart with my logical father. And I think actually my chart with my BCF is just there's so much well, there's also understanding with my BF, strangely enough. I mean, I think if he had been around in my life, he would have been someone who was understanding. But I I do think there's just a lot of harmony with my actual father. But you know, it's also funny. I didn't actually grow up with it because from age three and a half, I wasn't really living there. So but he still had an made an impact on your life. Yes, exactly. Exactly. He was there, just not on a daily basis, a weekly monthly basis. But yeah, he's still it is really, really interesting. And I I don't know, as far as like advice, I mean I know there are a lot of people in the MPE Facebook group who talk about like it's important to them to make it, to share it with the rest of the world. And I just haven't really, unfortunately, I haven't I have not felt better at all sharing it with friends or acquaintances or the people I've chosen to talk to. And then like, you know, many people are having that problem. Like if you're that your own family is not at all appreciating the significance of it. Yeah. Like my son never could comprehend why this was a big deal for me. Yeah. And my mother definitely not either. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe she tried a little bit harder, but for her, it was more just her own story and then her own shame and guilt. And all right. Well, if anyone would like to connect with you based on your story or how they can relate to your story, how can they best reach out to you? And if that means through me, if you're more comfortable with that based on some of your okay, all right. I'll I'll add that to the show notes to to reach out to me if they want to connect with you and I'll put you them in touch with you. Well, Spicy Scott, I want to thank you so much for sharing your story and being vulnerable. And and I should add, sharing your story publicly for the first time. I really have appreciated our talk before we hit record, since we've hit record, and I've really, really appreciated our time talking. So thank you. Thank you for having me. Wonderful opportunity to share. Thank you. If you would like to share your story, please email me at motherslies and dna surprises at gmail.com. You can share anonymously if you prefer. I would also love to hear from you with any questions, comments, or show ideas. Also, subscribe, leave a review, or follow the podcast Facebook page at Mothers Lies and DNA Surprises podcast. Thank you for being here with us where we are not alone in our struggles with our mothers.