I didn’t think to research the topic of misattributed parentage when I decided to write “Two Roads!” I am, however happy to understand it is a subject of interest to many in our nation. According to The Adoption History Project, approximately five million Americans alive today are adoptees, and two and one-half percent of all children under eighteen are adopted.

The scenario of Dorothy’s birth was not one of adoption; the trauma of discovering her parentage had been hidden from her for over four decades, must be similar to an adoptee finding out the details of their birth. As Memorist, Dani Shapiro writes, “We’ve all heard stories of people who discover, quite by accident, that their family history isn’t quite what they thought.”

Who would have thought how over-the-counter DNA testing would unlock the proverbial “closet” where so many family secrets have long been kept! While many of these secrets are discovered with this testing, sometimes people find out in other ways. A friend of mine discovered a father she never knew existed until he sought her out to let her know he had been diagnosed with Leukemia. Parents, at the last stage of their lives, under medication, lets it slip that the mother had a son when a teenager. A father mourns the loss of his wife at a funeral and discloses the couple had used a sperm donor. And then, the deathbed confessions about marital dalliances.

What Dorothy’s story hits on, is that regardless of how she learned about her “misattributed parentage,” the process of coping with such an experience is daunting and life-changing.