I Was the Only One Who Didn’t Know

What happens when the truth doesn’t arrive as a single moment, but hides in plain sight for years?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Dr. Nicole Price, a DNAngels Board Advisor whose discovery that her father wasn’t her biological parent came not from a sudden match, but from something she didn’t notice for nearly a decade. A small line of text. A quiet warning. A truth everyone else already seemed to know.

Nicole shares what it was like to realize she may have been the only person in her family kept in the dark, and how that silence reshaped her sense of self, her relationships with her siblings, and her understanding of empathy. She talks candidly about anger, betrayal, grief, and the physical toll this kind of discovery can take, including anxiety, identity disorientation, and the need for trauma-informed support.

This conversation explores what it means to grieve the person you thought you were, why “you’re still the same” can feel dismissive instead of comforting, and how healing doesn’t come from minimizing the impact of a DNA surprise, but from honoring it. Nicole also reflects on reconnecting with her biological father later in life, adjusting expectations, and learning to sit with silence rather than trying to force a relationship to be something it isn’t.

Nicole now helps others navigate these moments through her work with DNAngels, offering empathy and guidance to people who are just beginning to process their own discoveries.

Nicole will also be speaking at Untangling Our Roots, where she’ll be part of the DNAngels presence supporting attendees who are in the middle of discovery, grief, and integration.

This episode is for anyone who has ever been told to move on too quickly, who felt their body react before their mind could catch up, or who needed reassurance that this kind of truth really is a big deal.

Guest bio: Dr. Nicole Price is no stranger to the transformative power of empathy. Her personal journey, beginning with the revelation at 45 that her father wasn’t her biological parent, launched her exploration of empathy’s profound impact. These experiences now shape her professional approach, blending her technical, results-focused background with empathetic understanding.

Dr. Price’s dynamic genealogy workshops, consulting, and keynotes equip others with practical strategies to enhance their research. With her energetic presentation style, she inspires participants to apply empathy to their genealogical work.

She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina A&T University, a Master’s in Adult Education from Park University, and a Doctorate in Leadership and Management from Capella University. Postdoctoral studies were completed at Stanford University.

Key Takeaways

• A DNA discovery doesn’t have to be loud to be life-altering. Quiet realizations and delayed understanding can hit just as hard.
• Finding out you were the only one who didn’t know creates a unique kind of grief, one rooted in betrayal, silence, and isolation.
• “You’re still the same person” can feel invalidating. Discovery often changes how someone understands themselves, their body, and their place in their family.
• This kind of revelation is a grief event, not just new information. Grieving who you thought you were is part of healing.
• Your body often reacts before your mind can catch up. Anxiety, disorientation, and physical symptoms are common and real.
• There is no correct timeline for processing discovery. Pausing, pulling back, or limiting new information can be an act of self-care.

Transcript

A DNA discovery without fireworks, silence, secrecy, and reckoning

Corey 0:00

Welcome back to Family Twist. Today we're talking with Dr. Nicole Price, someone whose DNA discovery didn't come with fireworks or a big reunion moment, but with something quieter and in many ways heavier. Silence, secrecy, and a slow unraveling of what she thought she knew about herself and her family.

Kendall 0:18

Nicole's story lives right in that space a lot of you know too well. That moment when the ground shifts under your feet, and suddenly empathy, grief, anger, and identity are all happening at the same time. She found out later in life that the man she thought was her father wasn't her biological parent, and what followed wasn't just a discovery, but a reckoning.

Corey 0:43

Nicole was also a DM Angels board advisor, which means she's one of the people helping others navigate this exact moment. Often when they're still in shock. She brings both lived experience and a deep understanding of empathy to the work. And it really shows up how she talks about family truth and healing.

Kendall 0:59

And we're really excited to say that Nicole will be speaking at the Untangling Our Roots conference in March, where she'll be a part of the DNA's contingency. If you're gonna be there, this is absolutely a voice you'll want to hear. Especially if you're still making sense of your own story.

Corey 1:16

This is a conversation about grief, about not being Jedi mind-tricked into minimizing your pain, and about what it really means to rebuild a sense of self after the truth comes out. We're grateful Nicole trusted us with it. Let's get into it. Hello, Nicole. Welcome to the Family Twist Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Hi, thanks for having me.

Corey 1:37

Absolutely. There's definitely a lot of detail that we want to dig into. So when you first decided to do a DNA test, what did you think you were going to get out of it? And what did you end up getting instead?

SPEAKER_03 1:51

I guess that's how people find their way to your podcast, isn't it?

The tiny Ancestry clue I missed for 10 years

Corey 1:55

Yeah, because we're just like here in January and a lot of people get the DNA kits for the holidays as a gift. A lot of people start popping up. The DNA surprises are going to start popping up here in the next few weeks, I imagine.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Yeah, you know, I was an early adopter. And so when Ancestry.com came out, I jumped at the opportunity to find out my ethnicity, being African-American and not really knowing what specific countries or tribes I was from in Western Africa. I was interested in knowing about that. I believed I knew who my family was. So I didn't expect in any way, shape, or form I was going to have any shocking DNA matches. In the early years, much of the information on my family tree, I added it manually. I put it in. And so, you know, every year, you know, I'd see new things come out with new census records, and I'd just add them to the appropriate people. I'd never paid attention to there was small print on my paternal side that said, you have no genetic match to these people. I didn't see them until 10 years later. So here's what happened. One of my nieces got an ancestry kit as a gift for Christmas. And it just happened to also coincide with when I was getting my annual subscription renewal email that said you're going to be charged the$99, which is what it was at the time. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not in there enough. And when I got in there and I was going to add my niece to my tree, this was one of the first times I was, you know, kind of prompted to add someone through the system, not just me typing it in myself. And when I got tried to add her, it said half niece or first cousin. And I was actually confused by the language of half-niece. I'd never heard anyone use that language before, so it didn't even stand out to me. In fact, I was so confused, I just went with first cousin. So I just told myself, oh, my sister must be my mom. So I call her right away. I said, Hey, she's 14 years my senior, so this is possible. I said, Hey, are uh are you my mother? Because this thing is saying that, you know, my niece is my cousin. And she has the most odd reaction. It was not what are you talking about? It was like, oh.

Corey 4:23

Oh.

Finding my biological father with the help of a search angel

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Yeah. And so my birth certificate father is deceased, and so's my mom. So it took about four months for me to get it all sorted out. And I only got it sorted out through the help of a search angel. And I found out that I have a biological father. He is now 81 years old, and everything about him explains all the differences in me, but I had never met him before. At least not that I remember. He had met me.

Corey 4:48

Wow. How much did your sister know?

SPEAKER_03 4:51

She pretty much knew everything. In fact, it turns out that all of my siblings, all of my grandparents, neighbors, church members, family, and friends knew about this. I might have been one of the only people who didn't know. And it was just I when I'm listening to people, it's like they just didn't even think to say anything about it.

Kendall 5:12

Were you angry?

SPEAKER_03 5:14

How about infuriated?

Kendall 5:16

Yep.

I was the only one who didn’t know, and the rage that followed

SPEAKER_03 5:17

I mean, I could have scored earth with the anger that I felt at the time. It was I felt massive betrayal because you know, none of those people helped me get answers. They could have told me right away. And they didn't. They still wanted to keep the secret. So I was trying to do it on my own. And you know, if you don't know genealogy, it's not easy. And my nearest paternal relative was like 254 centimorgans. It wasn't a lot. But she was so incredibly helpful for what she did know. She gave us a name. That name led us to uh obituary. And in that obituary, then we had the names of all the the real names of the brothers, or my uncles and my dad. Because even the census records had the like an incorrect name. So I would have known I never found him without her, her help. So uh yeah, so I was angry because my family I had grown up with, I knew they were withholding information. They just weren't saying.

Corey 6:17

Wow. Isn't it wild that a complete stranger who you share a little DNA with can be so helpful? And the people that you've known your entire life aren't and just you know ignore the situation. It's just mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Yeah, it is mind blowing that people are embarrassed by their secrets, even if it's not theirs.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

And this person would have been my cousin's daughter, my auntie's granddaughter or something. And she didn't know anything about her grandmother except for her name, and uh that's all I needed. And she had her obituary. Wow. And so it was enough to help us get to where we needed to go.

Kendall 6:59

That's amazing.

Corey 7:00

So after getting this bombshell dropped on you, I'm sure it has permanently altered the relationship with the family that you grew up with. How do you decide that, okay, well, now I want to try to do a little bit more research or I want to find out who I am, where I came from?

SPEAKER_03 7:16

You know, I did something that I've now learned that most people don't do. As soon as I found him, he's only 20 miles away from my house. I went there immediately. And that day he told me everything that he knew. And then after that, I actually posted a photo of him and me on social media. Good for you. And so we kind of got it all out there. And so that's when I start getting backstory from again, not people super close to me, but people who were on the fringes of my parents' marriage to each other, who were then kind of giving me the insight of what had happened. But at some point, it started, Corey, to be a little overwhelming to think you know people so well, to think you know yourself so well, only to find out that you people would say, Oh, you're still the same person. Oh no, I I I have shifted. There's been a dramatic shift in how I express myself to the world, and quite frankly, who I am. There came a point where I just didn't even want to know more of this story. I just didn't want to know anymore. It's like I've got enough. My biological father's not married. It's just pretty much him and I. So it's, I think I've been fortunate in that regard that I haven't had to get to know all these different people. And he's been incredibly accepting. He does have a girlfriend, she's incredibly accepting. He has a brother who lives in Mississippi, he's accepting. So I've been fortunate in that. And also my mom is deceased, and my birth certificate father is also deceased. I'm embarrassed to say this a little bit, but I kind of shut off additional information after a couple of months. It was overwhelming to me.

“You’re still the same person” and why that hurt

Corey 9:02

Well, I mean, there's no right or wrong way to uh react and how to approach the situation from the get-go. And I don't know how much of Kendall's story you know, but if Kendall had been 20 miles away and found his birth family that way, he would have been the same way, knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell. Instead, they were hundreds of miles away, and so he blew up the social media and dropped a hair. Yep. So yeah, and I told him to pause a little bit, but he finally had this information after some 47 years. So how could you not act on it? And then as far as the overwhelming part, totally understand that. I mean, this is a roller coaster that people in the communities never get off. So it's totally okay to just let me close this for right now because you gotta take care of your mental health. And it can be a lot.

SPEAKER_03 9:49

The hardest thing through this process were the people who were saying, Well, your mom and dad, they're still your mom and dad. You know, these are still your siblings. I have six siblings. I'm the only one with a different father. So now I don't have any full uh full siblings, which means I don't have any full the nephews. And that hit me much later. There was this fog that happened that like some of these things didn't even start to make sense until later. I'm like, oh wow, I am the only one in this particular situation in my entire family. But as time has gone on, my paternal extended family, I was always so close to them. I'm still incredibly close to them. My relationships that are strained are mostly the ones with my siblings. And we just let time see if it'll heal it, but it is different. I know it feels different for me. They would probably say that it's not different for them, but I can, it's palpable.

Corey 10:49

Was your birth father able to shine a light on how this happened? How you were conceived?

SPEAKER_03 10:56

Yeah, so my mom and uh dad, and just for listeners' clarification, I'm t when I say dad, I'm talking about my birth certificate father. Um, my biological father, I just call him the old man. So yeah, hopefully that helps. My mom and dad had a tumultuous relationship for of which I don't really remember. I've blocked so much of it out. But the year before I was born, they broke up. They were completely separated from each other. My mom and the old man had a relationship going at work. He was the baker, she was the cook. My mother was uh very pregnant when she and my dad got back together. And so that's why it's not a secret to anybody. It's fascinating, though, because the questions I had for the old man were well, my mom lived in the same house until she died. And my dad had been dead for years, 35 by the time I met him, actually. Oh. You didn't think to come and look for me. Like, help me understand that. And he, you know, he's a man of very few words anyway, and he just doesn't have a good explanation. I have a child, and I cannot imagine that he's just a few blocks down the road. I would probably be sneaking up at church and sneaking at school events, just you know, in the audience, keeping track of what's happening, so I could kind of have some sense, but that's not what he did. What I understand is that my dad, as part of the agreement, was this guy's gonna beat it and this is my baby. Yeah, and we're taking care of her, and that's it. And there's a lot of beauty in that. The challenge I have is that there's so many things about who I am, physically, you know, medically, personality-wise, that only makes sense when you know that the old man exists, even how I look, really. And I've had comedic questions about that my entire life. It was just a running joke. And I certainly knew that I was not like the others, but I didn't have an explanation for it. Sure. My mom didn't know who her father was, and so you know, there's the possibility that I look like my paternal grandfather's side of the family. You know, there's I do just make sense of the things that don't make sense. And uh yeah, that's that's pretty much what he what he told me. It had nothing but wonderful things to say about my mother. It sounded like he really loved her and she made a decision to go back to be with her husband. So another thing I had to get over really quickly was it was very clear to me that he cared an awful lot about my mother. I just seemed to be collateral damage. He would never say it like that. He's too nice to say it like that. Uh if we're just looking at our words he's using, uh the way he's describing it, that's that's how I perceive it.

Corey 13:59

You know, a lot of these stories that we hear, the family that you know you grow up with, and you know, your dad, some of the dads out there just they have a really difficult time, and they maybe consciously or sub unconsciously treat that child differently. And it's sounding like you weren't treated differently than the other children in the house by your dad.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Well, you know what's fascinating about my situation is I was treated differently, but I was treated better. And so made a lot of things make sense. Can you imagine? You're my sibling, you know that's not my father, and I'm also getting preferential treatment.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

So I like that's why they hate me.

Corey 14:39

Knowing my family, that there's no way the secret could have been kept. It's kind of surprising that they were all able to you know keep this under their hats. Even just like in moments of anger or something like that, I can feel like it, you know, it would come out. So it's it's shocking that it didn't. Do you know where they told certain things like that, like were they threatened? Like you better never tell her, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

Yeah, so it is shocking because I know that I have other family members who have found out that they had, you know, DNA surprises from someone being angry. And so it's like, wow, how did that never happen to for me? But what this is what I understand that my patern well, see, I'm so used to saying my paternal grandmother, but that's not, she's not my paternal grandmother. Grandma Price, Grandma Price, uh just basically had a whole family meeting and said, Hey, if you're gonna be with this woman, I better not hear hide nor hair of this little girl feeling like she's different from the other children. It was like an entire family meeting, aunties, uncles, everybody. Yeah, sounds like it was something my grandma said, which is fascinating because I used to be a pretty judgy little young person. And my grandma would always say, just keep living, baby. And now I think I have a decent understanding that all of this backstory, there were so many things that I didn't know about myself in my own life that I was judging pretty harshly in other. And she was just telling me to be careful.

Corey 16:11

Right. Wow. It sounds like the I know you're you're technically you know biologically related, but that side of the family sounds pretty progressive, you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Yeah, they they are my people, you know. I uh if I think about where I find love, it's with my price family, my extended family. And, you know, there's a nature versus nurture thing. I I don't look like them. In many ways, I don't even act like them, but we have this gracious, bubbly spirit about us that I I think was a nurture thing, and I find home home there. So yeah, I I have landed now that it's been four, it'll be four years here in a few months, that on gratitude, but it was not, it took me a long time to get there because I just looked at everybody and labeled them all liars. That's it. I couldn't see anything else, and I I was mortified. Like nobody thought to tell me when my dad died, nobody thought to tell me when my mom died, nobody thought to tell me when, you know, you got this interesting thing happening with my my son's medical situation. Just nothing. Nobody thinks to say a word. And I had projected that to mean you were willing to hold this secret so much, you were willing to let my son die. I went that far.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

No, of course.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

He wasn't he wasn't in danger from dying in the moment, but you know, that's what I think. You all don't even care about my son. You want my son to die. I don't have accurate medical history. And today I'm out of landed moron. You you find out what you find out when you're supposed to find it out. I have accurate medical history. I didn't have some weird relationship with a brother or something. Though those were other things that I had all these hypothetical situations that would make me even more angry. What if I had dated my brother, you know? Yeah, and I don't I don't have a brother. That couldn't have happened.

Corey 18:10

I know you've said that to the old man as a man of few words, but how does he feel about being a grandfather?

SPEAKER_03 18:16

I don't really know how he feels. He's met my son before. My son is not as into this as I am. You know, he's like, I got grandparents, but they, you know, on his birthdays and stuff, my son will hang out with us, but it doesn't I don't know. He doesn't really talk much. It's I don't know how to say it except for he just really is a man of few words. If I want to get him talking, I have to ask very specific questions. And they generally can't be too emotionally uh challenging, or else he's just gonna say he doesn't know.

Corey 18:53

It's fine. That's it. That's tough. I imagine you would love to be to know more and be able to dig deeper and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

I had to finally get to the point and say he's not my dad. Like, not that not my biological father, the person I knew was my dad who was a musician, life of the party, you know, he's not that. And when I stopped comparing him to that, when I stopped looking for him to be something different at 81 years old, this is the way he I've learned now to sit in silence with him while watching a football game, and it's okay. Once I stopped expecting him to show up in the way that I think dads show up, it's it's been wonderful. I still get a lot out of the relationship just looking at him and seeing my face in somebody else's face, because for my whole life, I don't know that I had that necessarily. Genetic mirroring, they call it. There's something about that. And these we're both very particular about things. And so when he says something that is a little nitpicky, it just makes me smile because I was like, there's that nature. Thing coming out.

Corey 20:01

Do you attend family gatherings now with your siblings and extended family?

SPEAKER_03 20:06

I do again. I had stopped because that feeling that I'm telling you about is absolutely real for me. I walk in the room and I can feel that there's something different. And for a while I just said, why am I doing this to myself? I don't want to do this anymore. But now it's like, you know, I have some of my relationships with my siblings are almost back to where they were before. And for the ones that are still incredibly strained, why do I miss out on the party? Because those couple people are struggling with their, you know, how they feel about something none of us control. And so I found a balance that I think works for me. I go when I want and I stay home when I don't want to go. One of the bigger challenges between us is I think they would prefer that I kept my relationship with the old man completely private. And that's not I'm not ashamed of him, you know. And if we go out on his 80th birthday, that's a big deal. I'm gonna take pictures and we're gonna post about that. And they don't, I don't think they like that part.

This wasn’t information, it was a grief event

Kendall 21:14

Yep. Well, I don't think you have anything to apologize, Corf. But I get it. I feel like I have some of those same dynamics in my life where we tiptoe around people's feelings. And I'm like, there's nothing wrong with celebrating the things that we're celebrating, you know? Yeah, it's just ridiculous. And it's like, I'm 55 years old. You people need to get over yourselves.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Yeah, it's almost like they wanted me to find out, and it'd be like a little information like, oh, the Highland Milk Company was bought by Chateau Milk Company, and it doesn't matter, that's still getting my milk. Like, just don't like that kind of news. For me, this was life-altering. I had never run into something that my mind couldn't work me out of. This was disorienting in a way that I absolutely cannot explain. I love my mother. I never knew her to have lied to me, to lie to me about this. And people are like, well, she didn't lie. No, yes, she did. Yes, she did. She was there when I was telling the jokes. She was there. So she knew that I thought that, you know, that Lewis Price was my dad. She knew. And I since everybody else knew too, it just didn't make sense to me. What is the protection if everyone else knows as well? And then I was also mad that she was dead and couldn't protect me from my siblings when I discovered it. Like, how dare you take this to the grave? And then I gotta navigate it by myself. I was also ridiculously angry at dead people.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

I found out that my dad, who was my hero, was a very fallible human in ways that I just could not understand and believe these things about him. And it just really crushed my entire spirit. And the rebuilding has occurred for sure. Lots of good therapy. I've done somatic therapy, hypnosis, EMDR, like you name it, because my hair was falling out. I was having anxiety. I needed a lot of support and help. And so if there's anything that I'd like to tell people, it is don't let anybody try to Jedi mind trick you into believing that this is not a big deal. It is. And if your body is telling you it's a big deal, get the support you need because I am much better. I am much better now.

Kendall 23:39

That's wonderful.

Corey 23:40

Thank you for saying that because I think for a lot of people, the idea of therapy is still there's a stigma attached to it. And there really aren't enough therapists right now available that fully comprehend this kind of thing. So we need more training, more education, and more therapists because this is going to keep happening. I think that they say at least 10% of people have some kind of a DNA surprise or secret. And I think it's probably higher than that.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Because we don't know, right? That's right. The therapist who was supporting me before they had adopted someone in their family. My indignation about not being biologically related to the prices was too close for her. So I got somebody else, and he specializes in genetics and the importance of genetics and self-actualization. Just your identity and why it matters. He'd helped me feel all the emotions instead of pushing them down, telling myself they don't never say anything like you're still the same person.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

That's your family. I don't know about you two, but those trigger words.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Somebody even said, You still look, you look like your siblings don't. No, I don't.

Corey 24:54

I'm with you. It's tough. I mean, there are definitely things they're triggering for sure.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

I'm it's like like you see how large my forehead is. Like my forehead, I can get my whole palm up there. I mean, it's a large forehead. My siblings have this little bitty, like it's little bitty forehead. They have a lighter shade of eyes, looser curl hair. You know, just differences. Yeah. And so to try to say now, oh yeah, you still you look like them. I just roll my eyes. Like, stop it.

Corey 25:28

Yep. So Nicole, I think you touched on this a little bit already with talking about therapy, but for an NPE who is just getting this news and having this bombshell dropped in them, what would you like them to hear?

SPEAKER_03 25:44

People will tell you all sorts of things. The only thing that I will say is that if you just take one day at a time, you will get better. That thing where you look in the mirror, you can hardly even look at yourself, it'll get better. I remember early on, I couldn't get on Zoom. Like I couldn't look at myself because I kept seeing an 80-year-old man's face. Those kinds of things that are where you can't, you're obsessing, it will get better. Life will build around this new bit of information, and it'll get better. But a critical component of that is grieving the person you thought you were. Have a grief day, cry it out, get mad, all of the things, and that's part of the healing process. That is what I would like for people to know. That it's a grief event. The person you thought you knew, and all of the things you thought you knew about your family has died. And so when things die, we grieve.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

That is what I would want people to know.

Corey 26:54

Love that. I love that message. You know, Kendall and I, music is really, really big in our lives. And so a year or so ago, we started adding this as our final question for guests on the podcast. When this bombshell was dropping you and when you were going through it and and healing, is there a song or a musical artist that you leaned on?

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Yeah, in fact, it's a love song, so it might not make sense, but I was thinking about it to myself. It's always been you by Anita Baker.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

It's a love song. It's not made for this at all. But when I thought about it as a message to myself instead of a message to my lover, it gave me what I needed to still feel valued and worthy. Because if I am being honest and do not cry on this podcast, what in the world? I felt dejected by my siblings. I felt abandoned by my parents, and I felt unwanted by the new guy. And he just wasn't giving me what I was used to getting from people. Like I'm used to people lighting up when they see me. It's not his way. So I needed a love song to myself.

Corey 28:08

You know, I know that Tom Hanks says there's no crying in baseball, but there's always crying on the family twist podcast. But it's usually for me, I'm not wearing any makeup, but I didn't tear. I'm right there with you.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

No, that's and I if I'm being honest too. I just really want my I want my sibling. My sister, who our oldest sister who I thought was my mom, was basically the person who taught me everything. So she was, you know, she dressed me, she fed me. You know, that's how when there's a 14-year gap between siblings, you know, that's what happens, and it just feels like my mother is not talking to me. Like she won't say hello, she won't look my way if we're at the same plate and I can't control it.

Corey 28:55

I have no control over Noah. What do you do? Yeah, I mean we'll send out the healing vibes to your siblings and you because hopefully the tide changes and things get better.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Yeah, even when we had um my youngest of my brothers died, even at the funeral she didn't say a word to me. Nothing.

Kendall 29:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

Can't get my head around.

Kendall 29:21

Nothing should be that monumental to keep that divide.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

Yeah. Well, and I try to put myself in her shoes, you know, empathy is my thing. So let me try to understand things from her point of view and I know what she thinks, and it is that I am embarrassing my mother by talking about this, by sharing this story. But if everything everybody's saying is true, I don't it's not even that scandalous of a story.

Corey 29:53

Right, really.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

Yeah, to me, you know, I've done worse things. Yeah.

Kendall 29:58

It's your truth. You shouldn't have to hide that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

And thanks for the healing vibes.

Corey 30:04

Absolutely. And you know, just to close on a lighter note, you are a bright light. You know, I feel it. And so And you feel it? Keep shining, keep shining, because it's you know the community needs folks like you. So keep shining.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

The other beautiful thing that I think we uniquely have the opportunity to do is help other people find their family. There's been like a half a dozen other people who found their family now that I got the right information.

Corey 30:29

Yep. We learn new stuff every day, and we try to be here to help the other folks in the community. You know, that's why we're here.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Yeah. So you just made me realize I probably need to get in there and check my messages just in case somebody sent me a message and they're like, You haven't responded.

Corey 30:44

Well, do it when you feel like you're, you know, got the wellness to be able to handle it.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I already know I got a different dad.

Corey 30:51

True. True, very true. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for your honesty and sharing your story with us. It's gonna be helpful for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Corey 31:02

For sure. Nicole, thank you truly. The way you talk about grief and about letting your body lead instead of your intellect trying to outrun the pain, that's something a lot of people listening needed to hear today.

Kendall 31:15

Yes. And you gave language to something so many people feel but don't always know how to explain. That this isn't just information, it's a loss. And that grieving who you thought you were isn't weakness, it's a part of healing.

Corey 31:31

And the fact that you've taken what you went through and now help others through DNA angels, that matters. Especially right now when so many people are opening DNA results alone at their kitchen table, not knowing what the next step is.

Kendall 31:43

And if you're listening and you're going to the Untangling Our Roots conference, make time to hear Nicole speak. Whether you're brand new to Discovery or years into it, her perspective on empathy, identity, and self-trust is grounding in the best way.

Corey 32:00

And if today's episode stirred something up in you, take that seriously. As Nicole said, this is a grief event. You don't have to rush through it, explain it away, or make it smaller for someone else's comfort.

Kendall 32:12

We're really honored you shared your story with us, Nicole. Thank you for your honesty, your clarity, and your compassion.

Corey 32:19

And to everyone listening, remember Family Secrets are the ultimate plot twist. We'll see you next time. The Family Twist Podcast is presented by Savoie Faire Marketing Communications and produced by Mosaic Multimedia.