Elizabeth's Story

In this episode, Lily Wood sits down with Elizabeth, a trauma-informed yoga teacher who shares her traumatic story of surviving a chaotic childhood only to discover through a 23andMe test the devastating truth about her conception.

Elizabeth can be reached via email ekvipyoga@gmail.com

Resources Mentioned:

vipyoga-noco.com

DNAngels

DNA Surprises Podcast with Alexis Hourselt (3 part podcast)

NPE Stories Patreon

NPE Stories facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/NPEstories

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It was really devastating, and my rose-color glasses went flying into the next universe.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Hello, you are listening to NPE Stories. This is a podcast where NPEs can share their story. I am your host, Lily, and I found out I was an NPE through an ancestry DNA test that changed my life forever. NPE is a term that stands for not parent-expected or non-paternal event. This means that one or more of our parents are not who we believe them to be. NPE Stories is a podcast where NPEs can share their story of what their original family was like, how they found out they were an NPE, and what their journey has been like since the day they found out. Welcome to episode 242. Today I'm speaking with Elizabeth. Hi, Elizabeth. Hi, Lily. Hi, good to see you again and talk to you again. Yes. It was just yesterday I was taking a very relaxing yoga class of yours.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

That was fun. I'm glad you were able to join us.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

And okay, you called it yoga nitra? Yes, it's a um yoga nidra, it's a guided meditation.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

At the end of the day, I wear an aura ring. It's a wearable device, and it told me it said you were taking a nap, and it was right at the time of your yoga class. It thought I was asleep because my heart rate wasn't I was in such a peaceful state. Isn't that cool? That's amazing. And I don't nap. So it whatever you did, it was it was magic.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Oh, that's wonderful. I'm so happy to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Now, everyone in our in that online yoga class, were they all NPEs?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

All people with DNA surprises. So any late discovery adoptee, donor-conceived NPEs, um, it was exclusively a free yoga nidra for them. And yeah, I'll be doing another one between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then possibly next year to be determined, see how my yo-yo life goes. But I would like to continue offering three free um Yoga Nidras a year for our community. And the first one I did was in January, right after the holidays. So it's kind of, you know, during those sticky times, sometimes we can have with our, you know, family upset that we get with these surprises. It's just something that I can offer and maybe help get through a little more difficult time.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Exactly. Yeah, we just had Mother's Day, Father's Day will be coming up. We're recording this in 2026, but it sounds like you will be having another one around like Thanksgiving or Christmas time of 2026. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yep. And I do post in some Facebook groups that allow it. Um, on my Instagram, I will post about it when I get it um um scheduled, and I'll have it on my website, which I can give you my website address at the end if you would like.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yeah, let's get it now too, in case someone is curious right now. What is the name of your company or your website?

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Sure, it's um vip yoga-no co.com.com.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Oh, okay. That thanks again for doing that yesterday. That was really sweet. And I I recognize some of the, you know, sometimes you recognize people's, you know, from the NPE groups, their profile, their faces, and I've seen them at NPE events, and so yeah, it's a it's a I don't know, it seems like there's a lot of us, but yet we're still kind of a small community.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

You know, we have six degrees of separation somehow from people.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

So let's get into your NPE story. Why don't you tell me about your childhood? Who was in your family of origin?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Uh, okay, so I am the second born of four daughters. My mom was mostly a single mom. Um growing up, she divorced my stepdad when I was in the third grade, but they were separated for a year or two before that. I grew up knowing that my the man on my birth certificate, as I call him, but for ease of conversation, I'll say BCF, birth certificate father. My mom told me when I was eight that he didn't think I was his child. I don't know why she told me that. I normalized that most of my life, up until pretty much my DNA surprise in 2024. Because we didn't have contact with him. It was her first husband. My mom left him when she was pregnant with me, and he wasn't a part of our lives. We didn't have pictures of him, he didn't come and pick up my older sister, not me. So there wasn't really any reason for her to tell me that at such a young age. Um, but she said, um, I'll call, I'll call the people in my story by their names that I'm using in my memoir that I'm writing. Um, so Bruce was her second husband, and she said, Bruce is your he wants to be your dad, and he wanted to be on your birth certificate, and just giving me this whole like, you're, you know, he wants you, and the, you know, man on your birth certificate does not. You know, it was really hard. You know, I think back on how sad that made me. Um, my older sister and I were supposed to be the daughters of my mom's first husband, Martin, and my two younger sisters are supposed to be the daughters of Bruce. I have questions about my sister, two years younger than me, but that's not my NPE discover. We were poor, it was very unstable life. My stepdad, Bruce, was extremely abusive. He was very sadistic, and I think he just enjoyed um hurting me and my older sister. We uh moved a lot. We moved between states, we moved between rental houses. My older sister Mindy uh was very abusive to me as well and remained abusive to me um up until about the time I was 14. And then it just became about manipulation, and that lasted until I finally cut off contact in I don't know, it's been like 16 years ago because I couldn't deal with it. I finally just got strong enough to cut off contact with her because she was still very manipulative. Um, my mom was a very hard worker, she worked all the time, and when she wasn't working, she was at the bar looking for a boyfriend. We were left with sitters a lot, and then when my when Mindy became old enough to stay home with us, that's when the abuse really got bad for me because I didn't have the protection of a babysitter anymore. Finally just quit telling my mom because she wouldn't do anything about it. She just let Mindy have whatever she wanted. Uh Mindy, I don't know what her mental health issues are, but she definitely has her own trauma that she suffered before I was even born. Very difficult time bonding with my mom. And anyway, so she was never good to me growing up, my older sister. My two younger sisters, um, my baby sister, we got along pretty good. We're about five years partnering age. Uh, my sister, two years younger than me, Marie. She and I got along kind of okay, but we did get a few knockdown drag out fights. All of my sisters live in poverty. They, my Marie is homeless, she's been in and out of jail, in and out of um rehab facilities, court-ordered rehab. She has schizophrenia. And you know, it's just really it's really sad to have watched her life deteriorate in the way that it has. I was always different than my sisters. Um looking back, I don't understand why it didn't smack me in the face that Mindy and I looked completely different. That we were different personalities, every everything, just completely different. And um, I didn't look like my mom. I now I look at pictures, I'm like, my mom's like four or five inches taller than me, and the BCF is over six feet tall. Why did I make any connections to that? But I always felt like something was off. I um could because I wasn't like my sisters, I just was I had um more of a drive to break the cycle of trauma and abuse and get out of the life that my mom had delivered me into. Although I didn't have a way, I didn't know how I was gonna do it because I wasn't good in school. I didn't have anyone that said, hey, you can be better than this, and you can do this and you can do that. It was just this internal need to not live in this misery anymore. I was my mom's emotional support person from my earliest memories. I remember being around five years old and sitting in the waiting room of her therapist office while she had therapy. She didn't take anybody else. She took me. I was always the one that had to be right next to her when my sisters got into trouble. She'd wake me up out of bed when I was a teenager and say, Come on, we got to go rescue so-and-so. They're in trouble. I mean, I just I look back and I was like, man, I did not realize how much she was using me for emotional support. But at the same time, I can remember when she taught stopped telling me she loved me and stopped looking at me. And I feel like that was about the same time I found a picture of myself recently from that time period. And when I saw myself in that picture, I was like, I absolutely don't look like myself. You know, the whole um mirroring, and I don't, you know, once you have that DNA surprise and you see people that you look like, then you're looking back at pictures, you're looking yourself in the mirror and you're like, I don't look like myself. Well, I think my mom saw that picture, and it was very, very obvious that I was not my BCF's daughter. And I remember her having a nervous breakdown around that time, and and I did and it's super confusing to me now as an adult, is how could I be somebody that I think she loathed, but at the same time had to be her emotional support person? And so that was, you know, it's it's interesting how much I normalized and compartmentalized and repressed all these emotions that now are coming out today, and I have to unnormalize. So yeah, so that was really my upbringing, just a lot of chaos, a lot of toxicity, abuse, neglect. Um, there was fun stuff too at times. It wasn't like constantly bad, but things got a little better for me at home when Mindy turned 14. She got pregnant. And that was not a good thing, but she moved out. And that was the first time I ever really felt safe when she moved out. So um, unfortunately, she just continued her ways with her children, her abusive, manipulative ways. But yeah, so she moved out. Life got a little better for me. It was really hard being in a small town in a school. You know, there was one middle school, one high school, so everybody kind of knew everybody, and nobody liked my sister. I mean, she had like a handful of people that would want to beat her up regularly. And it was we her and I shared the same last name. Nobody else in our household had our last name. It was just us two. So I was tethered to her, and for that reason, I got labeled by people who didn't really know me very well. Like that I was like her, but once she she dropped out of school for a while and then she came back, but and then she dropped out again, I think. But once she was out of school, things got better for me at school because I was out from under her uh black cloud.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

And I just want to cut in here and just validate you on that sibling abuse. It's a very real thing, and so many people have dismissed it as like, oh, it's children, it's siblings fighting. No, it's it is real and it's off. And this sort of abuse could be, I mean, I'm I don't know how it's not illegal or punished, it's because it's oh, it comes from another child and they're your sibling, so it's dismissed. But yes, I'm just nodding along while I'm listening.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And to have your parent or parents not intervene is double down. And I mean, like my mom let my sister take my Christmas presents, and when I'd say, hey, she took my present, she won't give it back, my mom say, Let her have it. Wow, yeah. I mean, it was just unreal. Um, and somehow I managed to believe that my mom made changes in our lives to make our life better. Not great. I mean, we were still poor. I still had I started babysitting when I was 11 just to buy my own clothes, things like that. But but she the big thing was that she had divorced Bruce. And that was huge for me because he was so horrid. And I would say I was more of an I felt like more of an acquaintance with my mom than a mother or daughter, but I think what really saved me from kind of going down, well, a couple things that saved me from going down the wrong path, like my sisters did, is I was I tricked myself into believing that my mom cared about our well-being somehow. I don't know how I did that, but I did. I guess the brain has a way to help you survive. And my genetics, like my my paternal genetics. I just have, you know, learned that my paternal side of the family has a lot of tenacity and no no quit in them, and I don't have quit in me. And so I just had something different than what my sisters did, but they my sisters ridiculed me and called me names, and Mindy would get her sisters, her not her sisters, her friends to beat me up and call me names, and you're you know, just call me every name in the book because I was so different than them and like I was being stuck up. And Lily, I went all the way through grad school and human services and never heard the word resiliency. And if I had, it just went over my head or something. And the first time I heard, um, I was at a banquet for a quarter, I was a quarter-appointed special advocate volunteer, and there was a banquet, and there was a uh doctor talking about this boy who was severely abused, and and it ended up being him, and he said, I'm here today because I'm resilient. And I was like, Oh my god, I'm resilient, I'm not a bitch. They had me believing I was this stuck up bitch my whole life, and so it's just crazy to me how my brain tricked me into believing that my upbringing wasn't that horrible, my mom did her best, which she did her best, but it wasn't good enough. But in my mind, she did things to make our lives better, but in retrospect, she did not. And when I was 28, I got a call from one of my younger sisters saying that my mom was dating Bruce again, and I had a full-on visceral reaction. I absolutely could not handle the idea or comprehend how a mother would choose to be with a man who was so sadistic to her children. And I lost it. I mean, I fell to the floor and I just cried and cried. I was hysterical. Luckily, I was home alone. My husband was at work, I didn't have any kids yet, and I was gonna cut my mom out right then and there. She did end up remarrying him for several years and then divorced him again. But it it was really devastating. And my rose-colored glasses went flying into the next universe. And the only reason I did not go know contact with her then was I found out I was pregnant shortly after that. And I really didn't know if I should make that choice for my child to not know her grandmother. She was much better grandmother than she was a mother. Um, still has poor judgment, but you know, not mean, not neglectful, things like that. You know, just a much better grandmother, but huge boundaries. I will not bring my daughter to your home as long as you're living with that man. He is not allowed at my house. She tried making it like we were a big, happy family, and she'd write me letters and love mom and dad. And I was like, uh-uh, no, no, no, no. You can write me a letter, but none of this mom and dad crap. And because I had quit talking to Bruce when I was a senior in high school, because he was still in my life a little bit, but he uh he had gone to prison for drugs, I think. But my mom had said that he also had been charged with sexual assault, but the woman dropped the charges because she was afraid of what he would do when he got out. And I was never allowed to say no to anybody. I was never allowed to make decisions for myself that would protect me. It wasn't encouraged, I wasn't encouraged to say no to people. And I just I couldn't do it. I'm like, the sexual assault was too far. Too far. I can like, I cannot pretend like you're and I still called him dad at that time. Um, so I just couldn't do it. So I cut off contact and I hadn't, I don't think I had seen him since I was around 14. He was dropping off my youngest sister, and I was helping her get her stuff out of the car, and he came up behind me and grabbed my butt and said, I was getting big. I was getting so big, and that I should come stay the night with him when his girlfriend is working.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Um, yeah, she worked like the night shift at the sewage treatment plant or something. And he says, You should come stay the night with me. And I froze. I was just like, oh my god, like you've always been my dad, right? And I mean, I knew he wasn't biologically my dad, but I you've always been my dad. Why would my dad do this? And I've quickly moved away from him and I went in the house. My mom was in the kitchen, and I told her what had happened. I said, I never want to go to dad's again. And she says, Well, you'll have to tell him. Yeah. And I'm petrified of the man. Yes. So I he did ask for me, and I hadn't stayed the night with him for several years. Um, you know, you just get to be a teenager and that ain't cool, you know, go stay a night with your dad, whatever. But I did. I used to stay a night with him a lot. He'd ask for me all the time. Um, he paid more attention to me than my mom did in a lot of ways. But and the physical abuse stopped once they were divorced and I would stay at his house. The the mental crap, the um psychological torture would happen from time to time, but there wasn't any physical abuse. So, yeah, he asked for me sometime around Christmas, and I said I was sick, and I was so petrified that he would. Find out I lied that I actually got sick and I was like, Thank God I'm sick. Oh, you know, I'm like, I'll cough in his face if he shows up. Yes. And so, yeah, so I had not talked to him in years when they got back together. And it sent my mom and I's relationship never recovered from that. But the way she looked at it was I was just still mad about it. She didn't do anything wrong. And that's why our relationship has been so difficult because I'm just mad. Well, yeah, I'm mad. Hell yeah, I'm mad. Yeah, I'm mad. Why wouldn't I be? I'm angry that a mother would do that, that would choose to do that.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

I'm just so sorry she didn't protect you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Oh yeah, it was pretty rough.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Yeah, absolutely. So, how did you find out you were an NPE?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

I took a 23andMe test, like a lot of people. Um, but mine wasn't for funsies. I it had bothered me over the years, nagging at me that something about my conception story wasn't right as far as who my birth father was. There's just something. Something just wasn't right, and I couldn't figure out what it was. I couldn't think of where my mom could have been with another man because she left Martin when she was pregnant with me. Her story was that she left when she found out she was pregnant because he would make her have another abortion. And when she had left him, she met Bruce, where at the place she was staying at, Bruce came over, and that's how she met him. So my husband says, I don't know why you just don't think everything your mom says is a lie, because my mom lies a lot. I was like, I don't know. It's like you're not a liar until proven otherwise. I'm just that way, but I should think that way with her anyway. And so it just, you know, kind of bothered me as I got older, not as much like the nagging didn't really start um in the back of my mind until social media because um Martin, my BCF, he has other children. He has two that grew up with him. His two other sons each have a different mother, and then supposedly me, and then my older sister. And I had met the two brothers, and they're ginormous, ginormous people, and I'm five foot one, still not making any clicking there, and I'd met them. One of the brothers reminded me a lot of my sister, so I really didn't want much to do with him, and the other one, we got we get along pretty well, but when social media happened, I started looking at their pictures more. You know, I hadn't really seen them in person much. I started looking for the two siblings that didn't want anything to do with me because they believed their dad, I wasn't their kid. And um, so I started looking at their pictures, and I'm trying to find my face in theirs. And then, oh, I should backtrack just a little bit. I first time I ever met my BCF, met Martin, Mindy had found him somehow pre-internet age, um, in when I was a senior in high school. And she brought him, he came to the town we lived in, and she talked me into coming to meet him. And I know he knew as soon as he saw me I wasn't his kid. And I didn't like him. I thought he was weird. I hadn't heard good things about him from my mom anyway. And there was just like no connection. He tried to get me to go to dinner with them the next day. I says, No, I have plans with my boyfriend. I'm not doing that. He sent me flowers for my graduation, not money, but flowers. And he said, I know you don't have a father, but I'll be one to you if you want. I was like, Don't do me any favors, dude. And so I never had seen him again. Um, that was my only contact with him. And so I'm looking on Facebook and I'm looking at these pictures. I'm like, man, do I look like them? Do I have the same nose? You know, I can't, I didn't know how tall the two siblings I didn't have contact with were, but the height thing for whatever reason, like I said, didn't register with me anyway. Got three kids by this point, and I'm talking to my husband about, geez, you know, I think I kind of want to do a DNA test with one of these two brothers. I want Martin to know he's a liar. I want I I want to know he's a liar. I want to know that confirm that he's my birth father. And my husband's say, well, I don't want to take the chance of him finding out and um wanting grandparents' rights. It's like, he doesn't want rights to me. Why would he want rights to our kids? But okay, you know, I mean, it was a valid concern for him, and I just let it go. And that would come up over, you know, over the years. I would even say it to my mom. And she's like, Oh yeah. And I say, Well, I don't want Mindy to find out, and I don't want him to find out. And if I ask one of these brothers, I'll probably tell them, tell them. And she's like, Oh yeah, yeah, that might happen, you know. And one time I even thought to myself, well, maybe I'm adopted. No, I'm not, because she doesn't want the kids she already has. Why would she adopt any kids? And then one time I asked my mom, I said, Are you sure I'm not Bruce's daughter? She's like, No, no, you're not his. I was pregnant before I met him. Actually, it was really the end of 23, 2023. I had gone and went and got a trauma-informed yoga certification. And then that also led into the Yoga Nidra, which is a trauma resource. And I was, you know, I'm learning again, going all having a bachelor's in psychology and going through my master's, how the brain or how the trauma affects your body and your brain. We never back in the day, I graduated with my master's in 98, 99, I think. And so things have hopefully changed, but you didn't learn how all this stuff affects your body and how it keeps you in the fight, flight freeze. It's like, this is the disorder, these are the symptoms, this is how you treat it, this is how you assess somebody, blah, blah, blah. And um, so I was like, wow, I really need to work on more of my trauma because I had been in and out of therapy over year, over the years. I would go, and then I get to a point where I didn't feel like I was being helped, so I quit. So I went to start therapy again, and I was like, okay, one thing I can really do for myself is take that DNA test. The kids are older now, they're all grown. My oldest is out of the house, one in college, one graduating high school. I'm gonna do this. I'm just gonna do it for myself. I'm not gonna tell my mom, I'm not gonna tell anybody in my mom's side of the family or Martin. It's just for me. This is one thing I can put to rest for myself. And ironically, two times, of course, this had no context until my results came back and all this came out. Twice in like the lap the year or two leading up to me taking that home DNA test. My mom just randomly started talking about how the government will take your DNA if you do a home DNA test.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

And you know, you get a lot of context after you have a surprise like this. And so I just did it. I, you know, I was still busy with kids stuff, teaching, just life in general, but it still was a long four to six weeks. I don't remember exactly how long it took for those results to come back. And I was super nervous. I I I was just like anxious about checking my results because I think I just knew something wasn't gonna be right. But I still couldn't figure out how it wouldn't be right. Like there was no scenario where it couldn't be right. So I get my results. Don't know why, but I never familiarized myself with the app. I try to log in. All I see is click here for your tree, and because 23andMe will build you a tree with your closest matches, which is kind of nice. We're on our way out the door when I got my notification of results. Oh, and I click, and I'm like, oh, I can click on my tree. Well, it won't load. It's like, well, I don't got time to do anything by now. Right now, I get home, try it again, still won't load. I have no clue that there's a DNA page list or anything like that. I'm just like, oh, there's a tree, great. I did see my ethnicity, which didn't really mean anything to me because I didn't know anything about Martin's side of the family. So the next morning, I just I really feel like this was my brain giving me one more day before the shit hit the fan. And I finally get my tree aload. And I'm scrolling around, like I don't know which side's maternal, which side's paternal. It just it's not labeled, and if it is, I can't find it. And so I finally found on one side a cousin of my mom's that I recognize their name. Okay, over to the other side, and I find I have two first cousins. So I start asking my mom, and she doesn't know I've tested. I'm not telling her I've tested if I can help it. I'm gonna figure this out. I have a friend or had a friend, unfortunately, she passed away shortly after my surprise, but she was an amateur genealogist, and she knew I was taking this test. And so I texted her and I said, Hey, I got my results. There's nobody in my on my list with my maiden name. And there's these two first cousins that are paternal match, but I don't know them. Could this be wrong? And she's like, Dina, doesn't lie. She says, We got to build you a tree. Get me some information, this is what I need, and then I'll build you a tree. So then I get this information, and I message the two first cousins who I found out were brother and sister, and I messaged them each, and I'm like, hey, do you know Martin? Blah, blah, blah, date of birth, this is where he lived. Or then I gave their mother his mother's name, Martin's mother's name. Do you know this woman? And they didn't, they didn't message me back, and I didn't know that you could go and look on their people's profiles and see the last time they had logged in. And so they hadn't been on, and they were either ignoring messages from 23andMe or not getting them, I don't know. But so I'm you know, take to Facebook, I find them on Facebook, and I decide I'm gonna message the woman on Facebook. She messaged me back, she jumped, must have jumped on her 23andme and messaged me back on there. She says, I hope you don't aren't offended by this, but I need to talk to my mom and get some information. And pretty soon the male cousin messages me. And then he says, My mom thinks you must be her brother's daughter. And I was like, No, it can't be possible. How would I be her brother's daughter? It's a common name, so I'll just use it. It's Bill, and ironically, my BCF is Bill. So I said, no, that can't be. I don't know how my mom would have known him. And they well, he, my mom says that he was stationed in the military 100 miles from where we were born, because I told them where I was born and what year I was born. I was like, 100 miles? My mom was like got married when she was 16 and had a kid and was 18 when she had me, so well, almost 19. And she was married to an abusive man. How would she get 100 miles away? They're all excited about me though, because I suppose in their mind, I was a Nicholas Sparks move, you know, movie where, you know, long lost loves, he got shipped out and they never saw each other again, and she was a pregnant one mother, blah blah blah, right? Would have been a great story. And but that's not my story. So then the ma, their mom, she actually had a 23andMe account, but it was set to private. So she pops up, she opens it to the public, and it says, She's my aunt. I was like, this cannot be right. And then it was the next day after I opened up communication with the cousins, she messaged me on Facebook and she's like, Welcome to the family. Like, whoa, you're a ponies lady. I have no idea what's going on here. And did your mom tell my brother about you? I was like, I have no idea what's going on. So I'm spending all this time, it's like six days, trying to figure out how I could be related to these people without asking my mom. And at six days I couldn't figure it out. So I message my mom and I say, Hey, call me on video chat when you have time. So I just said to her, I said, I took a 23andme test, and I one, do you know how I'm related to the Walker family? And I swear, after I could replay this in my head, my mom had this rehearsed, and she made it the most horrific answer, and it was not an apology for what she had done to me, it was all about her, and she told me that things that she should not tell. Nobody, no mother should ever tell their child, no matter how old they are. But she said that that Martin, my BCF, would um drug my mom, drug her, and then let his buddies pay him to have their way with her while she was unconscious. Oh. Yes. And I was horrified for her, and I still am like it chokes me up to think that really happened to her, and I actually do believe that because if you've heard of um generational trauma, I'm sure you have an epigenetics, if I'm saying that right, where you can inherit traumatic things in your your memory and you know, in your body, and I always had this ugly vision of something horrific happening, and it was what my mom described. And I there was no way, there was no reason for me to have that vision because I never knew that happened to her until that moment in time, and so I do believe that happened to her, and it's horrible, it's absolutely horrible. Um, and I knew my BSAF was a horrid man, but I didn't know he was that horrid. And then I said, you know, I was just like immediately I was like, oh my god, this is horrible. This happened to you, and I wasn't even thinking about my conception. I said, Are you telling me my biological father um sexually assaulted you? She says, No, no, if he was um in the military, um, Martin would make me go prostitute there at the base. So that's when I learned I was conceived in prostitution. And my conception was Russian roulette. It could have been multiple people.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

So hold on. Martin not only drugged her and had her assaulted, but but she was also like a forced sex worker. Right. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah. Yeah. And and honestly, it's amazing my mom has uh achieved what she has in her life with everything that's happened to her. And so I am uh kind of astonished that she's functioning as well as she is.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Oh my god. Anyway, so yeah, so it was very brutal the way she told me.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

It could have gone a lot differently. Um, my mom never softens the blow about anything, she just goes right for the jugular. This was the worst ever throat punch from her. Things never recovered after that. Our relationship was always rocky after she went back to Bruce anyway. We had a lot of uh, a lot of hard times. And I realized through the course of all this that my mom is a narcissist. And yes, I can say that. I know people say, well, you can't say that because it's a psychiatric disorder. And I talked about it with my therapist. I said, how many people come in here and say, you know, I've done all these things to my kids. I gaslight them and I manipulate them, and um I use them for my emotional support people and my scapegoats and this and that. Do you think I'm a narcissist? Right. They don't go to therapy because they don't think anything's wrong with them. And so a lot she ticks a lot of the boxes for those traits, and I know there's a spectrum for it. And I would say she's kind of on the lower, and because she doesn't like to my face criticize me. But I found out later she was triangulating me against my younger sister, and then when this all came out, my younger sister said, This is the last straw, I don't want anything to do with you anymore. And so she took the side of my mom over this, which was very hurtful. I didn't want her to take sides, but at least support me.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

So we went nine months of a turbulent relationship. She even, oh, when she was telling me, I have to go back again, when she was telling me about what happened to her when I asked her how I was related to these people, she said her first words were, I hoped you would never find out. So she was gonna take it to her grave. And also, I told, she says, I told my godmother, which is her best friend, and her youngest sister years ago, decades ago. She says, I told them I didn't know who your father was. So my mom knew she did not know who my father was. I can see when she was pregnant with me and in 1970 having a baby, she was still married, but even though she wasn't with Martin, she was still married, why she would put him on my birth certificate. She wouldn't have known. She couldn't have known at that time. But as I got older and obviously didn't look anything like him or anything like my sister's a spitting image of him, and when and in some ways, a spitting image of my mom when they were the same age. If you look at side-by-side pictures, you wouldn't even be able to tell which was my mom and which one was her. And I look like neither of them, I look like my birth father. So she knew eventually that she didn't know who my father was, and so that was big because then when I decided I wasn't going to stay quiet about this, the conception story as much. I mean, like I'm telling it on the podcast, but I don't, and I tell people that I know, but I don't put it on Facebook. Hey, guess how I was conceived.

SPEAKER_02 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

When in my memoir, I use a pen name, I'm change all the names. I mean, I'm telling my story because it happened to me. And my mom's story happened, well, now 55 years ago. I was 53 when I found this out. And she even said, Oh, I've had 53 years to get over it. And I believed her because she goes to family events with my BCF there. She's had family pictures taken with him. So I believed her. You know, she's processed all of this, and now it's my turn to process. Well, as soon as it stopped becoming about her, that's when she started uh attacking the verbal attacks. Um, she, the gaslighting, she tried to take it back. I thought Martin was your, you were Martin's. I did, I did. I never lied to you. And she tried like six times to convince me that she never questioned who my birth father was. I thought the last straw was um, well, it wasn't quite the last straw, but we were getting there. We were on a virtual chat. I really chose my words carefully to talk to her. About something that about this that was really bothering me. And it was the fact that in 2022 I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which is incurable but treatable, and I'm living a fine life. I have no issues at this time, but it can be hereditary. And when I told my mom, I said, Hey, I have chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And her first words were, What did I do to you? What have I done to you? And I was like, Why does she think she caused this? Well, she was on drugs at the time of my conception. She would have been doing drugs before she knew she was pregnant. And I also found out I was born with one kidney abnormality. I have one large right kidney and one shrubled up left kidney. And when she found that out, she says nothing. She says nothing about my paternity. When I say this can be hereditary, I'm worried about my girls getting it. She says nothing. And so I went to her and I said, Mom, I'm really having a hard time with the fact that you didn't disclose my paternity when I told you I had CLL. And she looks at me and she just goes on, and she's like the biggest gaslight ever. And how she thought that it was a lot it that Martin was my dad, and it was, I want to repeat it because it was gross. But I just looked at her and I said, Mom, so you're saying that my birth father could have been five or six different men. Yeah. I said, What are you doing? Why are you still trying to convince me then that you think that Martin is my father? And so just went back and forth on that. And it was so exhausting. Um, I hit my last, I did get my last straw in January of um 25. And I blocked my mom on social media, and I um sent her a text, and it wasn't very kind, and then I blocked her number. And a couple months later, I was having regret at my last words, because I had never planned on talking to her again, were out of anger. So I opened up my I unblocked her number and I sent her a more compassionate text. I thought it was more compassionate anyway, and I said, I won't block your number if you'd like a chance to say goodbye. And she just responded, I agree, our relationship is beyond repair. I was like, Okay. I think my inner child needed to hear that because she was still hoping for a letter in the mail from you. Yeah. Fast forward to the week after Mother's Day, I reopened up contact with my mom, very limited. Um, of course, I knew she would take me back, air quotes, because it makes her look like a bad mom if her kids don't want to talk to her. And I set up big boundaries, and they said all I want to do is talk on the phone. I haven't told her yet she's never allowed at my house again. Um, she'll never be allowed to any family events we have. I may not see her in person again. I don't know. I have done a lot of work in therapy to become empowered to move into this relationship again, however, that will look, with clarity and my eyes wide open, knowing that there are topics I can't bring up where I'll get verbally attacked, that she is what she is. I spent 25 years hoping she would see me and my pain and what I'd been through, and she would miraculously become this nurturing, loving mother, but she's just incapable. She's too damaged to do that. And so I've given that hope up. Um and so, like our first conversation, she didn't even ask me where my how things were going for my CLL, like where are my levels at of you know, cancer in my blood or anything, didn't ask me anything about how I was feeling. And so I'm like, that's just my mom. And that's just what she's capable of. Not you know, she's just I the relationship we have is what she is capable of, and I have don't have any expectations anymore, and that's very empowering to me. And the reason I opened up communication again was I didn't want to have future regret. She's 73 or 74, I'm not sure. You know, I didn't want to have future regret because you can't unring that bell once they're gone.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

So I don't know what where this will go, but it will never be what it was before, which honestly, if I hadn't had this DNA surprise, I would not, I would still be in a toxic relationship with my mother, and I wouldn't have had all the growth that I've had. So there's a silver lining to that.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

Yes. I I think many people are in that same position.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Yeah, yeah. So that that's been an upside. Um, as far as my paternal family goes, I have met, I have gone and visited my biological father twice, him and his wife. I that's a whole story and how we got to that part. Um, I do have a three-part uh uh interview on Alexis Hour Salt's podcast. I think it's season 11, episodes one, two, three, and it goes more into all of that. And my second the second interview is with two of my siblings and their point of view on finding out about me. So that was really fun. I have a good relationship with I have three sisters, they have included me in their sister group. My kids have not been on board with this yet. They're very apprehensive. I'm not, it's still weird. I'm lucky. I know how lucky I am that my birth father has accepted me. His wife has accepted me outwardly, but inwardly, I don't think she wants me around. I think it's hard for her, and I don't blame her. I shouldn't say I don't think she wants me around. I think that it was very big shock for her. I think her and I had the biggest shock, probably, because neither one of us knew what her husband, my birth father, had done. But he knew.

SPEAKER_02 50:53

And so was he married to her at the time of the children?

SPEAKER_01 50:57

No, no, Lily, Lily. My stepmother's six years older than me. So wow. Okay, yeah, she's the same age as my husband. Okay, they are very devout LDS, Latter-day Saints. I did not think there was any way I would be accepted into this family. And the paternal aunt I matched with, his sister, um, that's a whole story, also, but she had me convinced that he didn't want anything to do with me. I as soon as because I've I just ended up telling her, this is what I found out from my mom. Because if I can't say what happened, then that means it's a dirty secret, and I won't be a dirty secret.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

So, yeah, so she tried to keep me contained in Facebook Messenger for a couple months, but it didn't work. And I reached out to him. I got a phone number from well, the white pages, but also Dina Angels, who actually ended up helping me figure out that for sure his because I was like, well, his dad could be my dad. I don't know. I don't understand all this stuff. And so I got somebody in one of the Facebook groups told me to contact them, and I did. And so they had it figured out. If I'd have known what I was looking at, I would have known that my grandfather was not my father, but I didn't know what I was looking at, and they figured it out pretty quick. And it was one of two brothers, the one that was in the military or the one that was living across the country from where I was born. I was like, Well, you know what? I am done having people tell me who my father is. I want DNA evidence. So I tried to contact him and I had the wrong number, it matched the number the angels gave me, but it was wrong. And I got hung up on basically. So I was like, okay, it was the wife in my mind, it was a woman. I was like, Oh, wife is hanging up on me because she's heard about me and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I finally ended up having to write. I have six half siblings. They've, my biological father and his wife have been married for 41 years, and they have six kids, and I wrote all six of them letters. And I was like, I know the recommendation is that you're not supposed to ask them to test in your first letter, but I'm not writing six letters again. And so I just like want to test. And so I sent those letters on Facebook with copies of my matches to their aunt and other people in their family tree, and then pictures of myself, me and my daughter. And I sent those all on to the every one of them on Facebook, and then I also sent hard copies in the mail. And by the end of the day that I had sent those, um the second oldest of the six messaged me, and she's the one that talked her dad into testing and contacting me. So he has accepted me as his daughter. My siblings have accepted me as their sister. The relationships are different with each one. I'm closer with the girls. I'm quite a bit older than all of them. The youngest brother is only a year or two older than my oldest daughter. And the oldest brother, I'm 15 years older than. So, but I don't feel that age difference. I'm pretty immature, so I don't feel that.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

Elizabeth, do you have any idea what sort of story he has told his children, or maybe like told them the truth.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Okay, okay. Yeah, he told them the truth. And I was really surprised because um, of course, my aunt I was messaging with, he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember your mom. So I didn't think he remembered. Well, then I'm starting, as I'm connecting with these siblings, they're saying, Yeah, my dad's like, there was this one time. And when I went to visit the first time, him and his wife both said I could go to church with them if I wanted to. I'm not an organized religion person, but I do find religion fascinating. And um, I was like, never been to an LDS church before. Why not? So I went and I was surprised because on the way, my stepmom was driving. My dad, I do call him my dad in conversation, but I have never called him that in when I talk to him because it still feels weird. How is this gonna go? What if how is he gonna introduce me? And I was like, Well, however, he wants to introduce me. It's his church, his friends. I'll accept that. You know, I won't be upset or anything, but I'm not gonna ask. And he turns around part way to church and he says, Is it okay if I introduce you to my friends as my daughter? I was like, Well, yeah, that'd be great. And then I asked his wife, I said, Is that okay with you? Which I'm sure they had talked about it, but still, and she's like, Oh, yeah, yeah. I think I took her off guard, you know, by asking. But, you know, I'm not the only one that had a DNA surprise. I'm not the only one whose life got turned upside down. And this is a scandalous conception story. So even though they weren't married, I think if they had been married and there was an affair, I wouldn't be a part of their picture right now. So, anyway, I um got introduced to his friends and as his daughter, and then after church, him and I went back to his house. And he just started telling me he remembered meeting my mom. I was like, what? And he told me that the story of where he met her was not at the base, it was 15 minutes from the town my mom lived in. He remembered her showing up, he remembered who brought her, the name of the guy who brought her, and then he said that's all he really remembered. I'm like, even if you do remember, I don't want to hear about it. So that really surprised me that he you know admitted to it and everything. And so anyway, we're right where we are now. I did visit again in December of last year, which was around my birthday, and I really wanted to do that. I dug into how I could get my birth certificate changed, and unfortunately, the only way to do that is to be adult adopted. And I asked them, I asked my dad and his wife about it, and my his wife isn't ready. So I am waiting. I don't know what ready looks like for her, but I'm gonna tell you what, it really pisses me off because this is my truth, and I still can't have it. Now my truth is being held by somebody else. And I want to be legitimate, I want to be legally claimed. Um, I think my dad would do it if his wife didn't have reservations, and I can understand how he would want to protect her feelings, but also I thought he should just take ownership. You know, he needs to take full ownership for me being on this earth. He made a decision, and now I'm the one right now suffering the consequences by being, you know, not feeling whole. Not feeling completely accepted. So but it's been two years. And then November it'll be no October of this year will be two years since we've made contact. Since I contacted so that it's short, but at the same time it's not, and so yeah, so that's upsetting for me. That was it it wasn't a hard no. I am gonna bring it up again. I actually write extensively about it in my memoir and what it means to me to not be able to get that changed. I don't say anything about his wife not being ready. Just that it's hopefully it'll be the right time soon. And I'm gonna when my book is published, which I'm hoping to have it by the end of summer done, I'm gonna send him a copy and ask him to read it.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Did he ever consider that his time with your mom would result in a child? Was that ever on his mind? No. No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

I think he might have as, you know, over the years he'd just forgotten about it. You know, it was 1970, it was the sign of the times. It wasn't, you know, I I wouldn't be surprised if he'd done it again somewhere, but maybe he didn't. Maybe he's like, ooh, I don't want to ever do that again. I don't know. But I sure hope nobody else comes out of the woodwork. I don't want to be the only one that comes out of the woodwork. So, no, I don't think so. I I think, you know, it was just a distant memory. He had a pretty uh, I think he was kind of a partier back in the day. And then in his early 30s, he converted to LDS, and that's where he met his wife in the church. So then he partying days were over when he converted, and you know, he and so he probably just, you know, thing of the past and didn't even think about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

I've even said to my husband when I gave him a 23 me and or ancestry, I'm like, be prepared, you might have a child out there. He's like, No, absolutely not. But they just you just don't know. You don't we have learned so much in our search, and and now you're even doing yoga and you you're you've you've mentioned you've been trauma informed. Uh you have a website you mentioned at the beginning, but I think we should bring up if someone wanted to learn more about you, Elizabeth. Let's bring it up again. Where could they find you?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

Sure. I um you can email me if you'd like. My email is also on my website, but I can give it to you. It's E K V Ip Yoga at gmail.com. And if anybody's interested in when my memoir will come out, it's about my childhood and then my DNA surprise. It's a combo story because I didn't have it in me to write two separate ones.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

Well, congratulations on that and all the hard work you're doing. Thank you so much for coming on today, and thank you yesterday for letting me sit in on that Yoga Nidra class. I really appreciate all you're doing, everything you're doing for your own self-work, but also how you're sharing it with the rest of us in the NPE community. So thank you so much, Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Thank you, Lloyd.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

These stories are here for us to identify with. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, email npestories at gmail.com. You do not have to give any identifying information. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, I'd like to hear from you. Subscribe to this podcast to hear more. Come heal with us.