Family, secrets and DNA
Searching for something that's always out of reach.
I used to have a guilty secret. Now I don’t. I’m on the other side of that guilt and being secretive. I don’t care who knows about my love of, and borderline addiction to, tv shows, podcasts, and books about unravelling secrets, discovering family history and finding out what DNA can uncover. I’m not alone in my fascination. That there are so many types of this media is surely due to the huge numbers consuming them.
ITV’s Long Lost Family is probably my favourite, closely followed by BBC’s relative newcomer, DNA Family Secrets. I love Who Do You Think You Are and Channel 4’s My Grandparents’ War for their historical content. Podcasts I can’t wait to listen to each week include Family Secrets (have you spotted the common denominator?) and The Gift, which tells the stories of people whose lives changed after opening a box containing a DNA test. There’s also Dear Therapists, which wonderfully combines my interest in secrets, family and therapy into an hour of listening joy. Two family history books which stand out from the many that I’ve read are House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family by Hadley Freeman, and Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival by Daniel Finkelstein; Jewishness, secrets, history and family.
This is a hugely popular genre with universal themes such as loss, abandonment, insecurity, longing, belonging, discovery, curiosity and love. How to explain the pull of this content for me, especially when it often causes me pain? What keeps me coming back for more?
I think that it’s a feeling of being part of a community of searchers. Ones who have lost a person that they may or may not have known, often early in life. Others who are missing part of themselves, or who have an incomplete knowledge of who they are. I know the yearning of those who tell their stories. I’ve been yearning for years; subconsciously searching for something just out of reach and which will probably be of no use to me even if it’s found.
For the longest time I thought the something was a person. I’ve always known where the person is and they know where I am. Is the person lost to me in that case? They are still alive and yet we do not know each other. Do they still exist in my reality? For the longest time, I wanted to know them. No more. Yet still I grope for something. Belonging, identity, security, safety, validation.
Does this make sense? Possibly not without more background. I’m the eldest of four sisters; the oldest three share a father and the youngest’s father became my stepfather. My father left our home in 1968 when I was six, and my sisters were nearly three and almost one. I didn’t see much of him after that. I do remember an outing to see The Three Musketeers at the cinema but I have little memory of other occasions. Most of what I think of as memories are disappointment from broken promises of days out that didn’t happen. Did this influence my feelings about him for the next forty years? I know now that memories are unreliable and are influenced by each of our unique perspectives; what came before the event and what comes after after it. They are a set of stories, each containing some truths or none.
Even now, I ask my Mum what happened over fifty years ago. I think I have it straight in my head. He left, they divorced, he remarried and soon after went to live in America (without his second wife), where he still is. She remarried and they had a baby girl, ten years my junior. I played a big role in bringing her up, as my Mum was preoccupied with keeping the family together and looking after my alcohol dependent stepfather.
I repressed all of this along with anger and many memories. Instead anxiety, depression, fear, over-attachment and low self esteem ruled much of my life. Throw in breast cancer, which I’m starting to think had its roots in all of the above, an inability to travel or have much fun, and I reached the point where I needed help. I’d been in therapy a few times before without committing fully to the process. I wasn’t ready to do the necessarily painful work that I’ve been doing with my current therapist for the last five-and-a-half years.
Maybe you think that’s a long time to to have been talking to the same person every week. I thought so too, before I started. Now I can’t imagine my weeks without that fifty minute period of time purely for and about me. At the beginning of our relationship I hated it when my therapist went on holiday. I mean, how dare she! In all seriousness though, I felt cut adrift and counted the days until I could be back in her room. I’m much better at coping now, not even feeling the usual pang of missing something during this Christmas break - a tangible sign that I am much more psychologically robust and independent than ever before.
Therapy needs a post all of its own. In summary, it’s been a life changer and I hope I’ll continue to live a self examined life.
A couple of years ago I did my own DNA test, having procrastinated for some time. What finally pushed me to do it was the tantalising hope that I might have the sprinter gene. Keep in mind that I’ve always been sports mad and did a lot of sprinting at school and University. I was intrigued to discover more about my family history and heritage and whether there were any close relatives that I knew nothing of. I’d already built a family tree going back to 1670 when my 8th great-grandmother was born in France. Her grandson, Alexander “Zender Falmouth” Moses was the first of my ancestors and the first Jew to arrive in Falmouth, Cornwall around 1740, where he lived until his death in 1791.
The results showed that I do have the sprinter gene which made me very happy. Senior sprinting championships here I come! My DNA also showed that I don’t have a unibrow, I have unattached earlobes and I’m a morning person. Unsurprisingly to me, I’m 89% Ashkenazi European Jewish, with a little bit of Scotland, Sweden, Denmark and Wales. I haven’t found any secret siblings, nieces or nephews but I have matched with two second cousins and many many third and fourth cousins.
I’m interested in why I haven’t contacted any of them yet. What could be on the other side of the computer screen and what secrets could our shared DNA uncover?