Thank you for sharing this deeply personal story with us. As someone who is adopted, I love hearing stories like this :)

Hello Rachel, I am 10s into this. I will definetly be kind love ❤

I heard it all, and my opinion of you hasn't changed. Instead, it clarified to me your drive and passion that you have in that field. I hope we get to meet your sibling's some day 😜🎉

They should have told you but I understand why they didn't. I too had a ....surprise....when I did my dna. Not a donor situation tho.....but no matter what the process, it is absolutely life changing. Let's just say that for all those folks out there doing geneologies.....the odds that you too don't have secrets or lies in your family tree are not all that great.

Thank you for sharing your origin story! I recently gave birth to an IVF baby and I can assure you, the second he was earth side, HOW he got here was suddenly irrelevant. All that mattered was he was my baby. I loved him. So I can understand how your parents could have simply not thought about it regularly. I’ll be having the conversation with my boy in time. Thank you again for sharing.

🥹🥹🥹 so beautiful yet so heartbreaking

My great grandmother was disowned by her Irish Catholic family back in the 30's after having my great uncle out of wedlock. She was graped by my great grandfather who was 4 yrs younger. Of course, he was also a pedo. Adoption was probably necessary

My husband was widowed before I met him. There are two adoption stories in his late wife Michele's family. She was the baby sister to 5 siblings. Her sister gave up a baby son 50+ years ago that was a product of a rape. He knew he was adopted and started looking for his birth mother a number of years ago, He is now blessed to have found a bonus family that treats him better than the brother he grew up with. He looks just like one of his uncles. The second story is very similar to yours. One of late wife's brothers adopted a son. That son too started looking for his birth parents. It turned out his bio parents (teenage and Catholic at the time) went on to get married and have three daughters. The bio mother passed away several years ago but the bio father is still living. Several months ago this son came to our town from Denver to meet his bio father and his sisters. Turns out that the sisters had gone to school with several family members and the bio father and Michele's oldest brother are in Knight's of Columbus together and work the monthly K of C chicken dinner at one of the local churches.. It's a small world.

My grandma had a similar experience. Her birth mother was 15 when she was born and the state immediately took her away to be placed for adoption (I believe this was in 1948). She's so close with her birth family now after finding them about 10 years ago!

@@maddiejoy6619 that’s wonderful! I know we are the exception rather than the rule, but to have found my biological family right after I lost, my beloved, adoptive parents was quite a thrill. The fact that they have embraced me and included me in the family has also been wonderful.

he was a cuck

His daughters life was based on a lie for the comfort & convivence of her secretive adopted parents, how is her father a hero? Her parents are thieves, they stole her very identity, they stole years of truth from their daughter, years of her life that she could have spent knowing the truth, knowing her siblings.. they stole those things because they were too selfish & too chicken to be honest with her. There is NOTHNG hero & EVERYTHING coward about that..

Thank you so much for sharing. Judging by your words in this comment, she will certainly know that you are the hero. So heartwarming 🤍

Please don't wait till she's an adult. This video proves how disastrous that is. As soon as she understands the birds and the bees (which should be now if not already), tell her. Withholding information is deception and if you don't tell her, you would be a hypocrit if you expected her to be honest with you.

@@saraschneider6781 I don't hear any disaster in this video, just saying. Each situation is different. As a psychotherapist and working with many children and families, my advice to him is to use his gut instinct and tell her when it feels right and he feels she is ready and mature enough to take in the information. There is a right time for everything. Rachel's story feels as though it happened just as it should have actually. Maybe they could have told her earlier, but then again, would it have altered her path? Who knows. It was not disastrous by any stretch of the imagination. Thank you so humbly for sharing your beautiful story @RachelSouthard You as well @healtor492

@@SomeGal ​ @SomeGal I was specifically speaking of the Creator's experience. HER experience was not traumatic. I feel deeply for you if this occurred for you.... I am assuming that it did not and in this case you are projecting your feelings as if it had. That is all. Everyone does have their own experience understandably and TRAUMA IS VERY REAL ( I lost my young son just a few years ago , among other things...we all have our own trauma...I 100% get it}. I must ask if this is your experience and if it was disastrous?... If so I feel deeply for you. If it is merely an opinion, you are projecting upon the previous writer of whom was simply writing about their current experience and that seems a bit unfair and somewhat judging. That is all. You could be inflicting an unnecessary trauma, guilt, and harm on this individual. Have you thought about this?? Please read comments well before you reply, and please think well as you respond... This is all I ask of you Many blessings to you and much healing

@@SomeGal I don't understand why it would even matter whether she was genetically his child or not. He loved her as his own, and he was in on the choice to get a donor. Therefore, there is no betrayal. Sheesh, until the last decade or so there wasn't really a way that this information would come out accidentally or in any way, and therefore, I am sure that many parents simply didn't mention to kids that "Hey, your Dad doesn't have any sperm, so we bought some." That is personal private health information (which by the way is information protected by law). What makes you think that as a child you should have a right to it automatically? We talk a lot about consent these days, but what you just said and the other commenter said, is that fathers in his situation don't get the decision, and the child's rights supersedes the parent's rights. I think it is up to the father to decide if he wants to share that information, as medical conditions especially of this type can be considered by the man to be very intimate and personal private information. Many men struggle mentally when they find out that they can't have children. A lot don't, but it isn't up to anybody to demand to know someone's medical information under any circumstances. The fact is, that he is her dad, daddy, pop, poppa, or whatever term of endearment a child would use to call the man who has raised them and loved them as only a real dad could. That fact hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is that she has 21 siblings. There was a birth of a boy child that was born stillbirth before either my sister or me. This was a subject that was so personal, that I didn't know about it till I was probably in my 30s or so. My parents weren't the ones that told me either. Was I upset because I didn't know about a stillborn probably 10 years before I was born? Hell, NO! The fact that kind of pisses me off is that someone had the audacity to tell me one of my mom's deepest darkest painful secrets. People have a right to have secrets, and you don't have the right to them. I never mentioned anything to either of my parents, because it wasn't my business in the first place, and I should have never known about it. Stop with the entitled to everything and all information from family, that you are not entitled to.

I'm sorry, no one commented on this?

🥹 my excitement for seeing your comment! Thank you so much. ❤️

MamaDoctorJones, is the best! 🥰❤️❤️

I hadn't thought of that, how powerful of an example this is of one's calling in life 😇

Her parents don't deserve a free pass, they LIED to their daughter and had no intention of ever telling her the truth. I can not believe the arrogance of so many people on this thread. How is lying to your children EVER okay, especially when it comes to something so important as IDENTITY & Mental & physical health?

NO WAY!!!! AT STILL!? That’s incredible!! I’m honored that you commented!!✨😭

My dad is incredible ♥️ thank you for such a sweet comment

I have no idea why but your comment made me cry. It was so beautiful.

Such a beautiful comment. Thank you so much

Her father & mother lied to her & had no intention of ever telling her the truth, even as an adult, when she began the conversation twice, they STILL lied to her, invalidating her to protect themselves, what the hell is wrong with everyone on this thread? A baby is not a knick nack or a souvinaiere you can just purchase for your own selfish emotional benefit, the whole practice of sperm donors is entirely unethical. If someone is unable to have their own child naturally than adopting is the only ethical option. I feel so badly for all the test tube babys whos parents were too selfish & self involved to even bother being honest with their children until they're interrogated into telling the truth!

My friend found out at about age 60 that the man who was presented as her father is not. But he is the father of her two younger sisters. It answered so many questions, as he had never treated her the same. All of her questions of why didn’t he love me, what was wrong with me were gone like a poof of smoke! And she got 4-5 half siblings. She loves family so that was a real bonus. Unfortunately her biological dad had died long before.

Thank you for this wonderful comment, Holly!❤

I intend to do 23 and Me or some other DNA testing for EXACTLY those reasons. When lies have severe negative health consequences - they must be brought to light.

do both ancestry and 23 and me as you don't know where close family members will test and they're the 2 main ones and the 2 that can't be uploaded to. all other dna companies allow uploads of you dna file so you can upload to them for free.

those tests are not great for medical stuff you need a medical grade dna test for that which is more expensive. however bio family stories are helpful in knowing what runs in the family.

that is my Southern family...can't believe anything they said cuz it proved FALSE...and I have a genetic condition that my son has and my D.O. says it is hereditary and no one else has it

I did 23&Me but didn’t find any unknown close relatives, but I wanted to find a few. My only sibling didn’t want to do it and told me not to tell her if I found any unknown children of our grandfather or father. Everyone has different opinions

But they still should have told her from an early age. Kids are very accepting and they just get on with it but to withhold such information could have ended their relationship because they lied to her and that's not right, she had a right to know who her birth father was.