After my mother’s death, I was going through a lot. I began to see my family for who they truly were, including my father. To be honest, I had always been aware of his shortcomings, but this was the final straw. I changed my phone number and cut everyone out of my life. They had caused me too much pain. If you’re interested, I would love to share more about it in another series.

A few days after I changed my number, I received a message on 23&Me. It was from a woman claiming to be searching for her birth father, who happened to share the same name as our father. To my surprise, her name matched the one my mother had given me, and the DNA results confirmed without a doubt that we were half-sisters.

Yet, I still couldn’t believe it and asked her if this was a joke. I guess it offended her, and she became standoffish. I tried to ease her tension by explaining that I had a rough relationship with him, and that I was just being cautious. I didn’t know if they were in contact, and was afraid that he was using her to get to me.

That did not sit too well with her, and her interaction with me became very cold and mean. I guess she was too consumed with her pain to empathize with mine. She made various comments about me and my husband that I didn’t like and was triggering. She made it clear she thought she was better than me and her husband was better than mine despite even knowing me.

She never asked about me or my life. She went on and on about her life and never asked questions getting to know me and when she did ask questions, it was to judge me. She took jabs every chance she could and the last straw was when she turned her attention to my husband. She made comments about how she could not believe that despite not knowing who her father was, she ended up with someone who was Indian and not someone one of another race. It was clear she was referring to me marrying someone outside of my race. Specifically, she was referring to me being with a black man. I could deal with a lot of things but I won’t deal with a bigot or racist. Her elitist attitude was off putting and I washed my hands of her. Her false sense of pride was just that: false. She knew nothing about me and the things that I overcame and accomplished. She also treated me like I was the one who wronged her, and I just couldn’t let her in my life especially after just cutting everyone else out for basically the same reasons.

Despite her disposition towards me, I still wanted to help her. I put my emotions aside, played nice and gave her his contact info. She deserved to know who her father is, and she should be able to ask him questions as to why he abandoned her and went on with his life as if she never existed. So, for that reason I helped her. I told her the type of person he was, which meant we had to come up with a plan for him to agree to meet with her.