The Lie That Raised Me Part Two

She logged back in.

After months of denial, after accusing AncestryDNA of switching samples, after trying to shove the results back into the box, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams opened her DNA account again.

The first cousin matches were still there.

This time, she did not look away.

In Part Two of this three-part late discovery adoptee story, Alicia takes us into the moment curiosity turns into confirmation. What starts as online research becomes a drive to Detroit. What feels like suspicion becomes documentation. What felt like a joke her whole life becomes a yellow card inside a government office that changes everything.

She was not who she thought she was.

This episode walks through:

• Reopening AncestryDNA results with new eyes
• Searching Michigan adoption and vital records
• Navigating Wayne County post-adoption services
• Discovering she was born under a different name
• Learning she had been placed in foster care
• Finding out her adoption records were sealed
• Calling her husband from the parking lot in shock

By the time Alicia leaves that building, she does not know how to get home. Not because she lost her car. Because she lost her identity.

She describes going home and staying in bed for three weeks.

Part Two is the emotional collapse. The unraveling. The moment when suspicion becomes documented truth.

And this is still not the end of the story.

In Part Three, Alicia begins the search for her biological parents and siblings. What she finds includes rejection, unexpected acceptance, and a family that had been waiting for her.

About Alicia Sharon Denise Williams

Alicia is a NAAP Board Member, speaker, storyteller, and adoption-truth advocate. As the founder of From Hidden to Healed, she shares her late-discovery adoptee journey, one marked by silence, spiritual awakening, DNA revelation, and the sacred work of untangling identity after truth emerges.

With compassion and faith at the center of her message, Alicia speaks to adoptees, NPEs, and anyone navigating misattributed parentage, reunion, and the lifelong impact of secrecy.

Her message is clear: what was hidden can be healed.

See Alicia at Untangling Our Roots

Alicia will be sharing her story live at Untangling Our Roots, the national conference for adoptees, NPEs, donor-conceived individuals, and families navigating DNA discoveries.

After hearing Part Two, you will understand why experiencing her story in person carries weight.

Learn more at untanglingourroots.org.

This is Part Two of a three-part series.

If you are a late discovery adoptee, questioning your identity, or sitting with unexplained childhood clues, this conversation will resonate.

Part Three drops next.

Transcript

Reopening the AncestryDNA Results with Urgency

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey, welcome back to Family Twist. This is Corey. So, if part one with Alicia was the slow burn, part two is where everything detonates. When I was editing this section, this is the moment I actually stopped the audio and just stared at the screen. Alicia goes back into her DNA results with new eyes. Not curiosity, but urgency. She's no longer browsing, she's building a case. She's running down every clue she has carried since childhood and testing it against data. And then she drives to Detroit, unannounced, in the middle of COVID, through nearly empty government buildings, looking for proof that she might be adopted. What happens next is not subtle, it's not gradual. It's a yellow card wave in the air. It's being called by the wrong name. It's the word adoption landing like a brick to the chest. When she says she walked out of that building not knowing who she was, that's not a metaphor. This is the part where the life she thought she understood collapses in real time.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

That changed my whole life. And I opened up that ancestry DNA kit again and started looking at it with totally new lenses. If these people are really my first cousins, who are they? If this person is my first cousin, then her dad or her mom, and I started, I gotta start, I gotta start figuring this out.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

It was more, I gotta find out if what my husband is saying is right. And we started going through that bullet point checklist that I've made my entire life that started making sense in a different way. Why was mom never invested in certain things? Why was my brother and I treated like two only children in the same household? I started looking at it as if, okay, let's look at it like she's not your mom and let's figure out who is. Back to childhood, things that I had never seen or known before. I had never seen my original birth certificate. I didn't get to see my birth certificate until I needed it to get married. And when I needed it to get married, then I realized that it was dated and stamped after my brother was born. It was dated and stamped April 9th of 1968. And I was born February 4th. I turned 60 tomorrow, 1966. And I was like, you know, that was always weird. But it was explained that my mom and dad were not legally married when I was born and when they got married back in those days. You know, your father had to apply, readopt you formally in paperwork. Okay.

unknown 2:59

Right.

Driving to Detroit for Adoption Records During COVID

SPEAKER_01 2:59

I bought that story, of course. That's why it's stamped with 68. Never doubted anything else out there. Didn't know what hospital I was born in. It was never talked about. Like I said, my mom most of the time forgot my birthday. When I woke up the next morning, I had this new fire to go back to the beginning. And I knew that had to start with me at least finding out where I was born because I didn't know. We never talked about hospital, you know. My kids knew all of that. You know, my kids knew their birth story. My kids knew the funny jokes that their father played on me while I was pregnant. My kids knew what labor and delivery looked like. You know, you threatened them with that. I was in labor four days with you, you know. So my kids, you know, I never knew those things. So I woke up that next morning and got on the highway, attempting to go to work, and did not get off the highway and started calling what I knew as the Detroit area. And for those of you that are not in Detroit, anything past Metro Airport, anything on the west side is Detroit to us. So it could be Southfield, Birmingham, Gloomfield, it could be Romulus, it could be Ecourse, you could you could be actually City of Detroit. I didn't know. So I called Wayne County, McComb County, all of the surrounding cities, just to find out how do I find my original birth certificate. And that was a process of elimination that led me to the right place. And it was another county filling me in that they had access to the state records, and they were able to direct me to Wayne County. I did go to Wayne County that day, and we're now we're in 2019, and we're still very early 2019. We're talking June-ish, May-ish, where things are now, but you have skeleton crews, you have the essential workers that are still there. And so, you know, people did not want you coming into their places of work, people did not want you showing up unattended. And I drove to Wayne County in COVID, masked up and got in the building because security was down low and there weren't a whole lot of people. The hallways were empty, it was a skeleton building, and I made it to the post-adoption agency where only one person was working on the whole floor, and she literally lost it. We're like, How did you get in here? You can't do it like this. You even have to make an appointment when we're in full operation, let alone coming to me during COVID.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

And you should have said, I'm here for work.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

And I wear a lanyard for work, anyways. And so people didn't even didn't even flip it. There weren't even enough people that even care who I was. And I got enough information from her through my tears of explaining, I'm here because I don't know I'm getting. I'm here because I don't even know if I'm adopted. I'm trying to find out if I'm adopted. I'm trying to find out if you have anything on record with my name on it that tells me I'm even in the right direction to start this journey. I could be totally off base. I could be totally wrong. You know, it could have been what I thought as a kid, but my father had a child with another woman and my mother took me in. But I'm not adopted and I am just the product of this, that, and the other. And she did give me some critical information that was earth-shattering in the moment. Because after my pleading, after my tears, after telling her why I was there, she came back out with this yellow card, like the kind that you used to get at the library when you check out books. So it was this big, large, and it was folded in half. And she's waving it and fanning herself. It wasn't hot, but she kind of was fanning herself with it, the information. And she says, Well, Sharon, the good thing is the adoption agency that you were placed with is no longer in business. So all of your information will be held with vital statistics and lancing, and you will be able to get all of that information from them. No, no, no, I'm sorry, you have the wrong person. My name's Alicia. Sharon for middle name. I don't know who what Sharon you looked up, but and she kept on talking. No, Sharon, you know, but you will have to apply for it. Here's the application for this. Here's the application for that. And the, you know, the Michigan Adoption Agency, you know, they'll have everything. I don't know how complete it is. You're going back a long way. And I said, once again, no, are you looking at the right person? My name's Alicia Sharon. And she's looking at me, going, Sharon, I'm not supposed to be giving you even the information that I'm giving you. What can be gotten at Vital Statistics and Lansing, and then it clicks in.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Wait, is that me on that card? Adoption agency, foster care.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I mean, it was like a brick, a weight. Everything that when I was everything she was saying was just boom. It was just like I could feel the weight on my heart. Everything that she was saying was just making me smaller and smaller and smaller.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

To the point when I walked out of there, I was an infant. Every person that had built up this woman was now a lie. My life was now a lie. And I didn't know who I was. And I walked out of there almost like I didn't know how to get home.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Almost like I didn't know where home was. Because in that moment I didn't know who I was.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

All I left there with was that you were born Sharon, you were placed up for adoption, you lived in foster care, and your records are in Lansing. And these two people that raised you.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

But the daddy that I idolized, neither one of them were my parents. And wait, are you saying what about my brother? Is he my brother? Yeah. And she's telling me at the time you were adopted, the only sibling listed is 11 years older than you.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Well, that's not the brother I was raised with. So I also left there knowing I had a brother. And I went back downstairs. I went to my car. And mind you, no one knew why I didn't show up at work. My husband didn't know that I stayed on the highway and drove to Detroit. Nobody knew anything.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

And I called my husband. And all I could say was they lied. They lied. Everybody lied.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Everybody lied. And he's on the phone going, What are you talking about? What did you do? Where are you? Yeah. And I'm like, I'm in Detroit. What do you mean you're in Detroit? I came to Detroit. What did you come to Detroit for? I was like, I had to start. You told me to start. You told me to start. I had to start. I came and start, and they all lie. And by this time, I'm literally banging on my steering wheel, banging, and my horn is like randomly because some hits are hitting the horn and I'm screaming. They lied and my horn is going beep, beep, beep. And he's trying to sort it all through. And I know that I can't drive.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Right.

Three Weeks in Bed and the Race Against Time

SPEAKER_01 11:41

I don't even and he's like, where are you? And I couldn't even tell on where I was because I was so laser focused on following the navigation app to get there. I don't even know what part of Detroit I'm in because I'm not a fluent in the area. So he's like, just set the map home and start heading back. And I'll start heading to you. I'll track you and I'll meet you wherever I meet you. And we made it to around Metro. And I stopped at a Cracker Bell restaurant, and my husband met me there.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

And he basically took home an infant. I went home. I got in the bed and I stayed there for three weeks. Wow. I stayed there for three weeks. Just crying.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Just going back through everything that didn't make sense. Every connection that like most parents do this, but mine didn't. Went through everything and now it was all like, oh now I understand why they didn't. Now I understand why when my father died we didn't get anything. My mother didn't call us to come help her sort anything.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

You know, I like thing like why she's not invested in me or my life at all.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Not created a mother-daughter bond. I stayed in that bed for three weeks, and the day I decided to get out of that bed, I went to work. I came to work with two more computer monitors. All three computer monitors in front of me, started closing my office door, had the one monitor with my work, and the other two monitors was knee deep with that ancestry DNA kit, every people finder, every bin verified, every private investigator that I could afford, every vital statistics record that I needed to fill out. I was knee deep in it and literally had a credit card pasted to my desk because I'm paying for everything. I felt like time was critical.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Time was critical. I don't know who I can find, I gotta find him fast. I don't know if my mother's alive, I gotta find her fast. I don't know if my father's alive, I gotta find him fast. Because the mother who raided me is now like 92, 93 years old. My father who raped me is already gone. I'm not gonna get information out of her because she hasn't given me information in 53 years.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

She's not gonna start telling me the truth now. So I started doing all of this without telling her, without even telling my brother. It was months before I told him. It wasn't until I was in Facebook groups and started publicly posting information. And luckily, those first cousin matches were good matches. And I was able to start finding my father's family very quickly. My father was already deceased. My uncle actually liked knew the whole story.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

What I was getting from the caseworkers and from my adoption records was a very negative, hurtful story that my mother was 14, that my father was 34, that he was he was written in the documents as being my grandfather. So I already had spent weeks thinking I was a product of incest. Right. I was not interested in finding him anymore because he's a bad person in my head already. I was very interested in finding my mother because now I know she's only 14 years older than me, and she's gotta still be alive, so my focus was on her. But when I finally got to meet my uncle, and he explained to me that no, he was not your biological grandfather, he was your biological grandmother's boyfriend. Got it, and he was very much socially looked at as my grandfather. My grandmother worked nights, and my mom was left in his care and went everywhere with him. And my uncle started seeing a shift in the relationship where they were becoming more of a couple. He was seeing hands being held, he was seeing arms being around her shoulder, he was seeing her looking at him with puppy dog eyes, and he started telling his brother, this girl's too young for you. I don't know what's going on, but you need to stop. She's too young for you. And he said he had a feeling things were going on, and he had a feeling things were progressive. And when his brother, my father, had said, if we had still lived down south, no one would think anything of this. Your mom loved my brother. She was totally infatuated with him. This was totally mutual. I saw it coming, I saw it developing, and I want you to know you were not a product of incest, you were not a product of rape. And yes, my brother paid dearly for it because, yes, he was sentenced and committed to prison of statutory rape of her because the grandmother was very angry, very bitter, and was not going to stand for this and was not going to raise this child that was conceived by her boyfriend and her daughter. My mother wanted to keep me and did bring me home from the hospital. It was my grandmother who said, we can't afford this, and she did not want to keep looking at me every day, knowing who I came to be. So the plot twist was the parents who raised me, my mom who raised me, and my grandmother worked at the same place. They worked at the same restaurant, and my biological grandmother had shared the story with my mother who raised me about her daughter and about this child. And the mother who raised me was in her 40s, could not have children. She had already lost a couple of children, and they had devised the plan on how and who they needed to put connected in order for the parents who raised me to go adopt me from this agency. So even though I was placed, I was placed knowing I had imping parents lined up.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

So do you know whether your biological paternal grandmother did she know anything about you? Would she have been given a chance to help keep you your father mother?

SPEAKER_01 19:46

She, my father was 34. His parents were already deceased at that time. But my father did know about me, and my father did sign my original birth certificate before that was part of his sentencing. So my original birth certificate, both my biological parents were signed on to it. My father completely stayed in touch with my mom. He actually served a sentence. He came out, they reconnected, they stayed friends until both of them passed away. So by found out both of my parents were deceased. But when I did finally, through a confidential intermediator, get my mother's death certificate. I didn't have her name. I knew my father's name. And because of the multitude of groups that I was involved in, I kind of felt like I was done. I had the story. I know how I came to be, I know how I came to be adopted, I know why my parents adopted. Although I didn't agree with them keeping it a secret, and I wish that they hadn't. I understood that through research and through the many multitudes of groups and how adoption agencies worked by that time. I understand how they were encouraged not to share that information. I had my brother's birth story. I understand now why there was this distance between how he came as a three-day-old baby, and my mother had to very quickly get consumed into life as having never had children to be a parent of a newborn. I now understood why my mother and I were not that mother-daughter bond because I did go home with my mother. I was taken away from her. And so the mother raised me was not that personal. And that was insane. I didn't see myself in her. I knew that it didn't make sense. I knew that it didn't match. And I knew in my heart that she was not my mom. When I was told and believed, and I was raised to believe what my parents said. So the story that was narrated and created, I bought into.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

Did you ever find out whether you have any half siblings out there?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Oh boy, did I.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Okay, I warned you. I told you this accelerates. From three weeks in bed to three computer monitors lit up with search results, credit card tape to the desk, private investigators, vital records, DNA cousins, a father who was not who she thought, and a mother who was gone. And then the twist inside the twist. Because just when you think you understand the narrative, the story of her conception shifts again. It's not incest. It's not what the paperwork suggested. It's something far more complicated, something layered with love, crime, secrecy, and social judgment. When I was editing this, this was the point where I realized that this was not just a DNA discovery story. This is about identity being dismantled and rebuilt piece by piece. And we're not done. In part three, we talk about what it means to live with this truth. About the half-siblings, about faith, healing, about whether redemption is possible after decades of silence. If you're coming to Untangle Our Roots, you are going to hear Alicia tell this story in person. After sitting with this audio in my headphones, I can tell you it lands hard. Part 3 is where the hidden becomes spoken. The Family Twist Podcast is presented by Savoir Fair Marvin and Communications and produced by Mosaic Multimedia.