A Donor Conceived Adult
Tiffany Gardner, an adult DCP
Tag: loss
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Phone Calls that Don’t Come
The call no one wants is also the call many donor conceived people never get. Nobody wants the call—the one you get when someone is seriously ill or has died. But for donor-conceived people who can’t find their close genetic relatives or are rejected by them when they do, the dreaded yet important phone calls
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The Sting of Rejection
Rejection from genetic family feels like being the kid nobody wants on the team. Do you remember the dread in PE when you were about to play a team sport and the students, not the teachers, would pick teams? I sure do. I remember the stress of standing on one side of the imaginary line
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(Donor Conceived) Baby’s First Christmas
Something about the ornaments from my first Christmas hits differently now that I know I am donor conceived. I have no independent memories of the ornaments. Instead I found them while moving my grandmother and mom out of their houses, respectively. I think about what these ornaments must have meant to them as they hung
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This Ride is Exhausting
I was riding high for a couple of weeks. The Atlantic article came out, and in its wake I had doors open for more writing opportunities, podcast interviews, potential collaborations, and more. I was feeling good. Empowered. At peace. I told my therapist I felt as if the grief over my biological father was in
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The Pain of Rejection
Share your joys and sorrows with your family. a fortune cookie Some days I just cannot fathom how I will spend the rest of my life cut off by my biological father and his family. Worth nothing more to them than a stranger on the street when I want so badly to have some small
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The Final Chapter
When my biological father stopped communicating with me, I thought perhaps God was taking him out of my life in exchange for my father who raised me. That maybe my dad would survive the cancer. I was wrong. It’s been exactly two years since I woke up to find an email titled “Final Chapter” and
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When the Party’s Over
Happy birthday to my biological father. I look at the picture of the day we first met just under three years ago and still cannot believe this is and always was my life. I still have to tell myself that this previously anonymous and secret stranger is and always was my biological father. I still
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Love is Not Finite
If you simply can’t understand why someone is grieving so much for so long then consider yourself fortunate that you do not understand. Joanna Cacciatore Some days are harder than others. I feel Father’s Day approaching, and lately reminders have popped up of how I was created with the purpose of always being an outsider
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Fear of Abandonment
When you fear the abandonment of another, the probability of you abandoning yourself goes up. Vienna Pharaon This one resonated. When I found my biological father and we connected, I did everything in my power to be perfect. I was sincere in my efforts at bonding with him and his wife, but I did my
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Curiosity is Not Dictated by the Reasons for Absence
You can’t be a sperm donor without also being a biological father. We Are Donor Conceived via Instagram My first father died when I was four. I barely knew him. But would anyone have told me never to wonder about him? That I shouldn’t care to know more? That he was not my father because
A Donor Conceived Adult 