#shareyourstory

I’m posting this for a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous for the time being. Please read her story and I would be happy to connect you if you want to share your story too.

Below is her message > if interested, please send me a message with your email address and she'll be in touch.

“I’m here today with a request for people to share their story with me, but before that, it I’ll give a bit of context as to my own.

I decided to do this anonymously because I'm not quite ready to share it publicly.

When I was 20, I was told who I thought was my father, was in fact not. I had a name for my biological father but he had passed away in the meantime, and I decided not to pursue it further for a variety of reasons. This is a decision I’m at peace with.

Nevertheless, my “father” suddenly not being related to me biologically generated so many questions for me. Many of these were around identity and just feeling uprooted.

Then came the medical aspect that played a part.
“Medical history on your father’s side?”
“I’ don’t know.”

There are lots of ways this plays on my mind in the background for me and has shaped who I have become (with the good and the bad, it has had a big impact).

There are a lot of people out in the world, who like me suddenly learnt something of this nature, that a parent (or even both) turned out not to be related to them biologically.

The thing is, often people don’t know this about us. There tends to be a lot of secrecy or taboo around it.

Sometimes we are born out of affairs, sometimes we are secretly adopted and we never knew, sometimes we were just never really clear on the story surrounding our birth.

Often, those surrounding us (our spouses, friends and children) don’t understand this part of us and they may be supportive but it’s very abstract to imagine unless you have experienced it.

I have decided to write a book with a collection of our stories. These will be anonymous and the book will serve for us to connect through each other’s stories.

Learn about the commonalities, the differences and even see things from different perspectives.

Not only that, it will give our loved ones some insight into what part this plays in our lives. And finally, I would like to bring this topic to light a little more, one that is so often hushed up.

I am looking for people to interview, who will share their story with me and share this journey with me to bringing the topic to the light a little more. These will be anonymous.

If this resonates with you, or if you know someone who might want to share theirs, please reach out for more information.

I will tell you more about the project and we can simply get to know each other to see if it is something you might be interested in helping me with.

I'm feeling so grateful you read to the end of this post and in advance for those willing to share their stories with me.”