How I met my father, but also, how I found myself

It’s March 9, 2026 when I’m starting this. I had a podcast back in 2024 - crazy to think that was 2 years ago! I liked researching and writing, but not so much the act of recording and definitely not editing. I actually can’t stand the sound of my voice, especially when it’s recorded, and editing means hours of listening to my voice and editing out all the “ums”, long silences, and other bits that no one wants to hear while they listen to a podcast. But I did have a podcast where I was sharing my story, in hopes of helping others and in hopes of finding out more about myself. 

I suppose I did learn about myself some from doing the whole podcast thing but I took a break when we were moving. Anyway, I’ve been debating whether I tell my story like I did for the podcast - from the beginning, then go back a bit before the beginning for the backstory? Or do I start with finding my father in 2023? I don’t know that there’s a right answer because there’s not any way to tell it that makes sense. 

But today, March 9th, is the third anniversary of when I got my DNA results so I think I’ll start with that part of my story. I kept notes, records, and transcripts of conversations and looking back, the fact that I even felt the need to keep records with him should have been a giant red flag. But I did. Screenshots, notes from verbal conversations (few), and the chat records from our conversations (more than a few, but really not that many). I haven’t looked back at those records but I have spent a fair amount of time analyzing my motivations, what I said, how I reacted to how he treated me, and what about me made him feel like that was okay. Spoiler alert: 2026 me is not the same person as 2023 me. 

Now I think it’s time for that postmortem on how it went so wrong so quickly. 

But before I do that, I want to say that I’m fine. I’m more than fine now, actually. After things fell apart, I blocked him and my half-sister on facebook, more to block me from seeing their posts than to stop them from seeing mine. My half-sister blocked me… I’m actually not sure when she did that because nothing happened between me and her. We only talked once on facebook messenger and a couple of times by text. My father surprisingly either never blocked me or unblocked me during the year or so I blocked myself from his posts. 

I admit, these days I do check in on my father and half-sister. I will never reach out to either of them, but I look, mostly to see if he’s alive. I saw when his dog died. I saw when his wife passed. She was kind to me the couple of times she and I talked, but I never got to know her. I wondered how my father would fare, but he seems to be doing okay. His posting cadence and content is much the same - late at night, a bunch of posts in one night, then a day or three of nothing. Almost all of it is political. I look at their facebook feeds now like I would a stranger - because that’s what they are. I’m able to look and be indifferent about what I see. Nothing he says or posts bothers me. Sometimes I’m amused by his lack of self-awareness but I chuckle and go about my day. 

I watched him for a while before I contacted him. My research started in November or so of 2022 and I found his facebook in December 2022 or January of 2023. I’d check his posts, then scroll back as far as I could to try to get a sense of who he was, where he was in life, and I guess working up the courage to contact him. I actually did contact him on Ancestry’s site on January 21, 2023 while I was digging into my family tree. My father had my mother’s first husband in his tree, which I’ll get into later. But he didn’t respond to my message, either because he didn’t want to or because he didn’t get the notification. I’m guessing it’s the former because when I checked again just now it said he hasn’t been active in over a year. 

He has his whole family tree on there but he never took a DNA test, or so he said, not with Ancestry. He wrote in February 2023 that he had taken a DNA test but he “won’t get a notice about long lost cousin Gertrude”. I could swear he told me that it was a test he took with his doctor, but I’d have to dig in my facebook messages to be sure. 

I have 56 pages of notes, single-spaced. And that’s not counting the facebook messages and screenshots. We talked a couple times on the phone, once on zoom, once or twice on facebook video call. When we’d finish up I’d add tidbits to my files because I wanted to put together every puzzle piece I could. 

But I eventually realized there was no “there” there. Nothing was going to make sense. And he had no interest in getting to know me as a person. And that’s fine (sad, but fine) because I know my motivations for reaching out to him. I wanted to hear his side of the story and get to know him. But as I listened to/read his self-centered stories for hours, I got to know him but I also found myself. 

So yeah, let’s start there.