SUSANNA
We always had a lot of albums in our house. One wasn’t enough, because my father Alberto used to love taking pictures, specifically pictures of people during the summer at the beach, of our friends and relatives. So, we had different family albums, but one in particular was my favourite and that was the one which contained all the black and white pictures, the old ones, the ones of our family. In the album there were pictures of the restaurant my grandmother used to manage, where my father also used to work. These pictures were really interesting. This album was kind of a historical one, because of the pictures that were in it and because of the people. There were also people which were not part of the family but that I would recognise or know who they were. The album was structured with a specific sequence, with a chronological order I knew by heart. I used to love to go through it and retrace it. For me it was a pleasure to go through the album pages, even though I knew them already. I liked to look at the album because I would see what my relatives looked like when they were younger, so I was also imagining how their lives were. It was also a way for me to understand that there were bonds between them even before I was born. My father’s sister and my mother, for example, were friends before Alberto and my mother got together. It was really nice for me to understand and explore the different relationship dynamics, looking at the pictures, and it was a way to have a confirmation about some events and to see certain things that I only heard from my parents and my family about life at that time. It was exciting to see the images and being able to imagine how their life could have been. They were also nice pictures to look at. One day, when I was back home from Florence, where I used to study, I found the album completely recomposed, re-edited and changed, without a logic or order. Alberto had haphazardly rearranged the pictures. Black and white ones were mixed with colour, while really old photos were pasted side by side with more recent ones. The chronological and linear pace that I used to know by heart was completely transformed. Everything was mixed. New pictures of people that I didn’t know were next to colour pictures of my parents, black and white old ones were now pasted beside pictures of my birthday. Regardless of the reasons why he could have wanted to do it, I found the result not really nice. It wasn’t pleasant to see, aesthetically. Its new random quality had a disturbing effect on me. The users of the family album are the family members. So, of course the new version of our album wouldn’t have disturbed a stranger seeing it for the first time, but that was not me. In the album there were pictures of weddings, of honeymoons, there were pictures of me as a child… Imagine looking at something for years in the same way, taking pleasure in its beauty, and then finding it completely reshuffled with pictures that were not fitting in. It was something I didn’t like, and I told my father about this. What disturbed me most is that it ended up being an ugly object. The sequence of the pictures was sedimented in my memory, and this allowed the album to become a “something” that had its own history and dynamic. It was an object rich in personal history that was completely throw overboard by this change, producing a nonsense thing, ugly, without an aesthetic. What did you do? Why did you throw everything overboard? I asked him. He told me simply that it was better that way, and that he liked it more like that. We didn’t talk about it so much. I know several families that don’t like to have a family album. It’s not mandatory. Creating this book can be overwhelming and maybe people prefer to have some images in a box and that’s it. Probably what your grandfather did was some kind of reaction to the topic of time, perhaps reshuffling everything between past and present, between people who were closer and more distant, it was a way to breathe, for him. It was a way to reduce the weight of the march of time. The past can also give you some melancholy, right? So maybe for my father it was a bit suffocating to have to look at the past, so static and so “finished”. Also, he was suffering from serious health issues, and perhaps this precariousness, this uncertainty was something he was feeling. Time is a fundamental topic; redistributing the images, changing the chronological order, gives you a sense of freeing yourself from a preordained path. It puts you back into the game, maybe it’s a way to feel redeemed from a personal health situation, I believe. For me though, the effect it had was unpleasant, it was unexpected, and I couldn’t understand at that time why he did it.
We always had a lot of albums in our house. One wasn’t enough, because my father Alberto used to love taking pictures, specifically pictures of people during the summer at the beach, of our friends and relatives. So, we had different family albums, but one in particular was my favourite and that was the one which contained all the black and white pictures, the old ones, the ones of our family. In the album there were pictures of the restaurant my grandmother used to manage, where my father also used to work. These pictures were really interesting. This album was kind of a historical one, because of the pictures that were in it and because of the people. There were also people which were not part of the family but that I would recognise or know who they were. The album was structured with a specific sequence, with a chronological order I knew by heart. I used to love to go through it and retrace it. For me it was a pleasure to go through the album pages, even though I knew them already. I liked to look at the album because I would see what my relatives looked like when they were younger, so I was also imagining how their lives were. It was also a way for me to understand that there were bonds between them even before I was born. My father’s sister and my mother, for example, were friends before Alberto and my mother got together. It was really nice for me to understand and explore the different relationship dynamics, looking at the pictures, and it was a way to have a confirmation about some events and to see certain things that I only heard from my parents and my family about life at that time. It was exciting to see the images and being able to imagine how their life could have been. They were also nice pictures to look at. One day, when I was back home from Florence, where I used to study, I found the album completely recomposed, re-edited and changed, without a logic or order. Alberto had haphazardly rearranged the pictures. Black and white ones were mixed with colour, while really old photos were pasted side by side with more recent ones. The chronological and linear pace that I used to know by heart was completely transformed. Everything was mixed. New pictures of people that I didn’t know were next to colour pictures of my parents, black and white old ones were now pasted beside pictures of my birthday. Regardless of the reasons why he could have wanted to do it, I found the result not really nice. It wasn’t pleasant to see, aesthetically. Its new random quality had a disturbing effect on me. The users of the family album are the family members. So, of course the new version of our album wouldn’t have disturbed a stranger seeing it for the first time, but that was not me. In the album there were pictures of weddings, of honeymoons, there were pictures of me as a child… Imagine looking at something for years in the same way, taking pleasure in its beauty, and then finding it completely reshuffled with pictures that were not fitting in. It was something I didn’t like, and I told my father about this. What disturbed me most is that it ended up being an ugly object. The sequence of the pictures was sedimented in my memory, and this allowed the album to become a “something” that had its own history and dynamic. It was an object rich in personal history that was completely throw overboard by this change, producing a nonsense thing, ugly, without an aesthetic. What did you do? Why did you throw everything overboard? I asked him. He told me simply that it was better that way, and that he liked it more like that. We didn’t talk about it so much. I know several families that don’t like to have a family album. It’s not mandatory. Creating this book can be overwhelming and maybe people prefer to have some images in a box and that’s it. Probably what your grandfather did was some kind of reaction to the topic of time, perhaps reshuffling everything between past and present, between people who were closer and more distant, it was a way to breathe, for him. It was a way to reduce the weight of the march of time. The past can also give you some melancholy, right? So maybe for my father it was a bit suffocating to have to look at the past, so static and so “finished”. Also, he was suffering from serious health issues, and perhaps this precariousness, this uncertainty was something he was feeling. Time is a fundamental topic; redistributing the images, changing the chronological order, gives you a sense of freeing yourself from a preordained path. It puts you back into the game, maybe it’s a way to feel redeemed from a personal health situation, I believe. For me though, the effect it had was unpleasant, it was unexpected, and I couldn’t understand at that time why he did it.
SARA
The picture is from 2017, it was the start of May. I discovered it recently, the belly wasn’t visible yet, but it was coming out.And I almost got accustomed to the idea of having this baby. I discovered I was pregnant when I was at the fifth month. My belly wasn’t visible and my doctor didn’t tell me to do a specific blood test to check if I was pregnant. I just did the urine test, which didn’t come out ok. The doctors told me that my amenorrhea could have been caused by a problem with my ovaries. They also thought I could have had hepatitis. At the time I was on psychiatric treatment, taking some strong drugs which were pretty dangerous for the pregnancy. The drugs were supposed to cure depression. I was depressed because of what had happened to me. My relationship broke up, I had a loan which became a debt, I lost everything, my house, my job and also a life, a normal life. One day I fainted- I fell on the floor, and then they discovered that I was pregnant, at risk of abortion, and also risking my own life. I was carrying a life, and my life was being drained without me knowing. Anything I was eating was not enough for the two of us. After I fainted, they brought me to the hospital, did a sonogram and told me I was pregnant. The doctor told me “I was going to give you bad news, but no. You are pregnant.” This was my introduction to the pregnancy. I couldn’t believe it- how could I be pregnant? I didn’t have a belly, no doctor told me anything, how could I know? It was disturbing. Honestly I didn’t want it, at that moment. Then I got accustomed to the idea that I was pregnant and that I couldn’t do anything because I was in the fifth month and I had to become familiar with the idea that I was going to become a mother just four months later. I wasn’t ready, and so I decided to try and accept it. I took these self portraits in front of the mirror to look at the life that was growing inside of me. It was a way for me to realise what was happening. The more I looked at it, the more I was becoming conscious about it. I took these pictures without thinking about how to take them. It was almost accidental.I would have loved the baby to move, so that it would have appeared in the picture, but it didn’t work. Maybe because of what happened afterwards, it was best like this, without so many pictures.I don’t have any other picture from that time, apart from these. They are the only pictures I have of me during the pregnancy. At the time of the pictures, I didn’t know what would happen later. My father didn’t want to be involved. He didn’t want to help me, or to have me at home with a baby. I kept those pictures. I signed for “secret mother” knowing that the day after I would give birth, a family would come and pick my son up. I thought I would keep the pictures as a memory, so that if at some point he would come and look for me, I could explain to him why he was adopted. So I always kept the pictures, always holding on to the possibility that I might meet my son one day and show them to him. And if he asks me why I did it, I can tell him the truth. Because I wasn’t feeling ready, because your father didn’t want to help me. No one recognised you. I did though. I wanted to give you a good life, and that wasn’t possible with me at that moment.I regretted I gave my son up for adoption, but I couldn’t do anything else. I had so many second thoughts.But I think I would do it again, if I found myself in that same situation. It is already hard to be here by yourself, imagine it with a son. These pictures helped me to comprehend what happened, that I was becoming a mother without wanting it and at short notice. And they are also a memory to show to my son, to tell him that I wanted him but it wasn’t easy. I spent the last two months of my pregnancy at the hospital- I was living there. My father and his partner didn’t want me to live with them anymore, and so one day when I had a check-up at the hospital, they left me there. The hospital became my home. While I was at the hospital I realised that I was too alone, that I couldn’t keep my child and allow him to go through what I had been through. In the end I was fine with the decision I took. If my mother had been there it would have been easier, she could have helped me. If you have questions, your mother can help you out on how to be a mother. How do I change a diaper? How do I do that? How do I know if he wants to eat? How do you become a mother? When they took him I didn’t know anything anymore. My belly wasn’t big anymore. I felt really weird. They cut me, from one ovary to the other. Normally the birth should be a natural one, but in my case they didn’t want that because of the bond that starts from there and also because the baby would have felt me and my pain. I felt empty. I felt detachment and emptiness. When I look at those few pictures I have of me while pregnant I wish I could have kept him, but I couldn’t. I feel nostalgic of something I lived. It’s not easy to become a mother but it is beautiful.
The picture is from 2017, it was the start of May. I discovered it recently, the belly wasn’t visible yet, but it was coming out.And I almost got accustomed to the idea of having this baby. I discovered I was pregnant when I was at the fifth month. My belly wasn’t visible and my doctor didn’t tell me to do a specific blood test to check if I was pregnant. I just did the urine test, which didn’t come out ok. The doctors told me that my amenorrhea could have been caused by a problem with my ovaries. They also thought I could have had hepatitis. At the time I was on psychiatric treatment, taking some strong drugs which were pretty dangerous for the pregnancy. The drugs were supposed to cure depression. I was depressed because of what had happened to me. My relationship broke up, I had a loan which became a debt, I lost everything, my house, my job and also a life, a normal life. One day I fainted- I fell on the floor, and then they discovered that I was pregnant, at risk of abortion, and also risking my own life. I was carrying a life, and my life was being drained without me knowing. Anything I was eating was not enough for the two of us. After I fainted, they brought me to the hospital, did a sonogram and told me I was pregnant. The doctor told me “I was going to give you bad news, but no. You are pregnant.” This was my introduction to the pregnancy. I couldn’t believe it- how could I be pregnant? I didn’t have a belly, no doctor told me anything, how could I know? It was disturbing. Honestly I didn’t want it, at that moment. Then I got accustomed to the idea that I was pregnant and that I couldn’t do anything because I was in the fifth month and I had to become familiar with the idea that I was going to become a mother just four months later. I wasn’t ready, and so I decided to try and accept it. I took these self portraits in front of the mirror to look at the life that was growing inside of me. It was a way for me to realise what was happening. The more I looked at it, the more I was becoming conscious about it. I took these pictures without thinking about how to take them. It was almost accidental.I would have loved the baby to move, so that it would have appeared in the picture, but it didn’t work. Maybe because of what happened afterwards, it was best like this, without so many pictures.I don’t have any other picture from that time, apart from these. They are the only pictures I have of me during the pregnancy. At the time of the pictures, I didn’t know what would happen later. My father didn’t want to be involved. He didn’t want to help me, or to have me at home with a baby. I kept those pictures. I signed for “secret mother” knowing that the day after I would give birth, a family would come and pick my son up. I thought I would keep the pictures as a memory, so that if at some point he would come and look for me, I could explain to him why he was adopted. So I always kept the pictures, always holding on to the possibility that I might meet my son one day and show them to him. And if he asks me why I did it, I can tell him the truth. Because I wasn’t feeling ready, because your father didn’t want to help me. No one recognised you. I did though. I wanted to give you a good life, and that wasn’t possible with me at that moment.I regretted I gave my son up for adoption, but I couldn’t do anything else. I had so many second thoughts.But I think I would do it again, if I found myself in that same situation. It is already hard to be here by yourself, imagine it with a son. These pictures helped me to comprehend what happened, that I was becoming a mother without wanting it and at short notice. And they are also a memory to show to my son, to tell him that I wanted him but it wasn’t easy. I spent the last two months of my pregnancy at the hospital- I was living there. My father and his partner didn’t want me to live with them anymore, and so one day when I had a check-up at the hospital, they left me there. The hospital became my home. While I was at the hospital I realised that I was too alone, that I couldn’t keep my child and allow him to go through what I had been through. In the end I was fine with the decision I took. If my mother had been there it would have been easier, she could have helped me. If you have questions, your mother can help you out on how to be a mother. How do I change a diaper? How do I do that? How do I know if he wants to eat? How do you become a mother? When they took him I didn’t know anything anymore. My belly wasn’t big anymore. I felt really weird. They cut me, from one ovary to the other. Normally the birth should be a natural one, but in my case they didn’t want that because of the bond that starts from there and also because the baby would have felt me and my pain. I felt empty. I felt detachment and emptiness. When I look at those few pictures I have of me while pregnant I wish I could have kept him, but I couldn’t. I feel nostalgic of something I lived. It’s not easy to become a mother but it is beautiful.
SACHA
There are so many ways of becoming a single mother. In 2008 my relationship of eight years ended and in that moment I realised that if I really wanted to become a mother and couldn’t find the right partner, I would have to do it on my own. Afterwards I had a two year relationship that eventually ended. At the age of 35 I decided I was going to have a child. It is strange but what happened is that my whole body told me that I wanted to have kids and I wanted them now! In Dutch we say ‘rammelende eierstokken’ (rattling ovaries)- it means the physical urge to have children. Before that I used to like kids, but I never felt this need so strongly. I couldn’t control the feeling and I hated it, because I am a person who wants to have control over her feelings. I then started investigating and I collected information about being a mother on your own, and I was really doubting if I wanted to look for a co-parent. A friend of mine told me that she was working with a man, a gay man who wanted to have kids and wanted to become a co-parent. I met him a few times, but it didn’t work out for me. He was a nice person, but I didn’t see us co-parenting and having a child together. Eventually he also realised it couldn’t work. After having this experience, I understood that I didn’t want to share my child. I wanted him or her for myself 100%. I expected that raising a child on my own would be a lot of work, but I also thought that I wouldn’t know until I experienced it. I then went to the hospital and got tested to find out if I was ok and if I could have children, and then I tried insemination with sperm that I bought through a Danish website. It was quite expensive, and the insemination happened two times but it didn’t work, so I began to look for another option. Then I realised that I wanted to know the donor, to know where the sperm came from. I had been Googling and searching on the internet and I finally found a website called One Wish. It sounded like some dating site, but you create your account and tell your story, and state whether you are looking for a donor or a co-parent. I thought well, let’s create an account and see. Within a week I had four reactions from four different men. I met with one of them, C., a few times and he became my daughter’s donor father. My donor listed several profile pictures. In some of them he was standing. There was a picture of him in the water, walking back to the shore after surfing and he also sent me a picture of himself from his childhood. The photographs play an important role in giving a first impression of your possible donor. For me they should be attractive, a good looking man. The colour of the eyes was important, as was the height. That mattered for me. I believe that the donors think carefully about which pictures to use on their profiles- most of the ones I had contact with were really really self-confident people. C. wasn’t arrogant, but he was self-confident. With one possible donor I found him good looking in his pictures and I liked his physicality, but then we talked on the phone. He said he wanted to help me, that he had helped a lot of women. Then I remembered seeing on the television that some men gave their sperm so many times, that at the end there were 50 kids coming from the same donor. He gave me that impression. Pictures can be misleading.C. showed me pictures of himself as a child and said that he wanted to become a donor to be sure that his genes would be passed on. I guess this motivation is one of the most common in men who decide to become donors.I decided that he was the one, my daughter’s donor father. We then set up a donor contract and legalised it by going to the notary. Then we started; it took about one year, doing it by myself, injecting the sperm. And here she is. We customised our donor contract, and decided that no matter what age my daughter is, if she wants to know who her donor father is and meet him she will be able to do so.
There are so many ways of becoming a single mother. In 2008 my relationship of eight years ended and in that moment I realised that if I really wanted to become a mother and couldn’t find the right partner, I would have to do it on my own. Afterwards I had a two year relationship that eventually ended. At the age of 35 I decided I was going to have a child. It is strange but what happened is that my whole body told me that I wanted to have kids and I wanted them now! In Dutch we say ‘rammelende eierstokken’ (rattling ovaries)- it means the physical urge to have children. Before that I used to like kids, but I never felt this need so strongly. I couldn’t control the feeling and I hated it, because I am a person who wants to have control over her feelings. I then started investigating and I collected information about being a mother on your own, and I was really doubting if I wanted to look for a co-parent. A friend of mine told me that she was working with a man, a gay man who wanted to have kids and wanted to become a co-parent. I met him a few times, but it didn’t work out for me. He was a nice person, but I didn’t see us co-parenting and having a child together. Eventually he also realised it couldn’t work. After having this experience, I understood that I didn’t want to share my child. I wanted him or her for myself 100%. I expected that raising a child on my own would be a lot of work, but I also thought that I wouldn’t know until I experienced it. I then went to the hospital and got tested to find out if I was ok and if I could have children, and then I tried insemination with sperm that I bought through a Danish website. It was quite expensive, and the insemination happened two times but it didn’t work, so I began to look for another option. Then I realised that I wanted to know the donor, to know where the sperm came from. I had been Googling and searching on the internet and I finally found a website called One Wish. It sounded like some dating site, but you create your account and tell your story, and state whether you are looking for a donor or a co-parent. I thought well, let’s create an account and see. Within a week I had four reactions from four different men. I met with one of them, C., a few times and he became my daughter’s donor father. My donor listed several profile pictures. In some of them he was standing. There was a picture of him in the water, walking back to the shore after surfing and he also sent me a picture of himself from his childhood. The photographs play an important role in giving a first impression of your possible donor. For me they should be attractive, a good looking man. The colour of the eyes was important, as was the height. That mattered for me. I believe that the donors think carefully about which pictures to use on their profiles- most of the ones I had contact with were really really self-confident people. C. wasn’t arrogant, but he was self-confident. With one possible donor I found him good looking in his pictures and I liked his physicality, but then we talked on the phone. He said he wanted to help me, that he had helped a lot of women. Then I remembered seeing on the television that some men gave their sperm so many times, that at the end there were 50 kids coming from the same donor. He gave me that impression. Pictures can be misleading.C. showed me pictures of himself as a child and said that he wanted to become a donor to be sure that his genes would be passed on. I guess this motivation is one of the most common in men who decide to become donors.I decided that he was the one, my daughter’s donor father. We then set up a donor contract and legalised it by going to the notary. Then we started; it took about one year, doing it by myself, injecting the sperm. And here she is. We customised our donor contract, and decided that no matter what age my daughter is, if she wants to know who her donor father is and meet him she will be able to do so.
STEPH
When I was twenty five I discovered that I was donor conceived. I think it is important to know that I am part of triplets, and it was my brother who was first informed about it and also decided to inform us, me and my sister. Before that, I wasn’t aware of the fact that I could have been donor conceived. I always thought that my mother and my father were not only my parents but also my biological parents. There was no reason to believe that my parents would withhold information from me- it was a concept that never popped into my head, although I sometimes thought that I didn’t fit in in the family I was raised in. When I was younger, I always felt strange and sometimes a bit awkward towards my father, because we didn’t have a connection, physically or emotionally. For me the relationship was kind of strange, but I always thought that it was what it was, and that I had to accept it. When my brother informed us that we were donor conceived, it was kind of like a glitch in the way you build up your image. After he told us, I realised that when I looked at myself in the mirror I didn’t recognise myself anymore, because the picture on the screen or in the frame didn’t add up. It was like, you look at yourself in the picture and then it turns out that your father is not your biological father, and now you know that you have a biological one, but you don’t know who it is. I knew my mother was my biological mother, that was a 100% fact. I was trying to set aside the physical resemblances that I share with her, to see what was left over, to see a glimpse of the person that I am descended from, the biological father.I must mention that my brother found out about our donor conception because his girlfriend at the time had a conversation with our aunt, my mother’s sister, and she was aware of the secret and she told the girlfriend, probably thinking that she would also keep it a secret. On the one hand you have the mirror reflection, which is like the building of your identity which is crumbling down, because you build your identity by reflecting yourself towards your family, the people you think you descend from. So when you discover that it was just a lie, a facade, the identity crumbles and you need to rebuild it. When I found out, my perspective changed because I was more aware of things. So you have pictures of my father with us, for example, but my father is always distant. Most of the time he is very distant in the picture, so you see that there is a distance, it is visual. It was not only emotional distance, you also see the facade. In my family most of the time we were smiling in the family pictures, but when there was no camera we weren’t smiling. I was raised in a very dysfunctional family. Before I found out the truth, I just wouldn’t have thought more about certain things. I wasn’t looking for a reason behind certain behaviours, I always thought I was the reason why there was distance between my father and I. My parents later conceived a child naturally. Three years after we were born, my mother got pregnant accidentally. They had thought they were infertile, and if you look at the pictures of my father with his youngest son, his biological son, there is more love and more connection between him and my little brother than there ever was between us and him. Some pictures lie and some pictures don’t. When I found out I was donor conceived, it felt like a stage curtain had been pulled back, and I could finally see everything that was there, in order to make the stage present and existing. Finding out that I was donor conceived helped me to understand which relationships are real. If you see the picture of my baptism, and look at the people that are standing there, every one of them knew before I did and nobody ever told me, except the aunt I told you about, who told my brother’s girlfriend. The people who should have had my best interests at heart and who swore in a church that they would act for my best care, did not. It is really sad. A lot of the people in that picture have since passed away, but I would have loved to travel back in time, to have a conversation with them and to ask why they didn’t tell me the truth. It was the baptism of three children so there were a lot of people, because every child has their own godfather and godmother. In this picture, at the left is my sister’s godfather, then you have my grandmother, the mother of the father that raised me, then baby me. Then the lady with the red cardigan is my biological mother, next to her is my father and next to him is the sister of my mother-she is the one who told the girlfriend of my brother- and beside her you have my maternal grandmother and my grandfather, who was my godfather, and lastly the husband of my paternal grandmother. It’s also funny, or rather not funny but cynical, that the minister in the church, handing out the candles, was our family minister so he was also aware. And the candle he is holding is the candle that you light and you say, I am going to act in the best interests of the child. I am going to take care of her and do what is right for her. The holy candle in the house of God with a lot of people sitting there who are fundamentally liars. It is a nice picture, but looking back it is very deceptive.
When I was twenty five I discovered that I was donor conceived. I think it is important to know that I am part of triplets, and it was my brother who was first informed about it and also decided to inform us, me and my sister. Before that, I wasn’t aware of the fact that I could have been donor conceived. I always thought that my mother and my father were not only my parents but also my biological parents. There was no reason to believe that my parents would withhold information from me- it was a concept that never popped into my head, although I sometimes thought that I didn’t fit in in the family I was raised in. When I was younger, I always felt strange and sometimes a bit awkward towards my father, because we didn’t have a connection, physically or emotionally. For me the relationship was kind of strange, but I always thought that it was what it was, and that I had to accept it. When my brother informed us that we were donor conceived, it was kind of like a glitch in the way you build up your image. After he told us, I realised that when I looked at myself in the mirror I didn’t recognise myself anymore, because the picture on the screen or in the frame didn’t add up. It was like, you look at yourself in the picture and then it turns out that your father is not your biological father, and now you know that you have a biological one, but you don’t know who it is. I knew my mother was my biological mother, that was a 100% fact. I was trying to set aside the physical resemblances that I share with her, to see what was left over, to see a glimpse of the person that I am descended from, the biological father.I must mention that my brother found out about our donor conception because his girlfriend at the time had a conversation with our aunt, my mother’s sister, and she was aware of the secret and she told the girlfriend, probably thinking that she would also keep it a secret. On the one hand you have the mirror reflection, which is like the building of your identity which is crumbling down, because you build your identity by reflecting yourself towards your family, the people you think you descend from. So when you discover that it was just a lie, a facade, the identity crumbles and you need to rebuild it. When I found out, my perspective changed because I was more aware of things. So you have pictures of my father with us, for example, but my father is always distant. Most of the time he is very distant in the picture, so you see that there is a distance, it is visual. It was not only emotional distance, you also see the facade. In my family most of the time we were smiling in the family pictures, but when there was no camera we weren’t smiling. I was raised in a very dysfunctional family. Before I found out the truth, I just wouldn’t have thought more about certain things. I wasn’t looking for a reason behind certain behaviours, I always thought I was the reason why there was distance between my father and I. My parents later conceived a child naturally. Three years after we were born, my mother got pregnant accidentally. They had thought they were infertile, and if you look at the pictures of my father with his youngest son, his biological son, there is more love and more connection between him and my little brother than there ever was between us and him. Some pictures lie and some pictures don’t. When I found out I was donor conceived, it felt like a stage curtain had been pulled back, and I could finally see everything that was there, in order to make the stage present and existing. Finding out that I was donor conceived helped me to understand which relationships are real. If you see the picture of my baptism, and look at the people that are standing there, every one of them knew before I did and nobody ever told me, except the aunt I told you about, who told my brother’s girlfriend. The people who should have had my best interests at heart and who swore in a church that they would act for my best care, did not. It is really sad. A lot of the people in that picture have since passed away, but I would have loved to travel back in time, to have a conversation with them and to ask why they didn’t tell me the truth. It was the baptism of three children so there were a lot of people, because every child has their own godfather and godmother. In this picture, at the left is my sister’s godfather, then you have my grandmother, the mother of the father that raised me, then baby me. Then the lady with the red cardigan is my biological mother, next to her is my father and next to him is the sister of my mother-she is the one who told the girlfriend of my brother- and beside her you have my maternal grandmother and my grandfather, who was my godfather, and lastly the husband of my paternal grandmother. It’s also funny, or rather not funny but cynical, that the minister in the church, handing out the candles, was our family minister so he was also aware. And the candle he is holding is the candle that you light and you say, I am going to act in the best interests of the child. I am going to take care of her and do what is right for her. The holy candle in the house of God with a lot of people sitting there who are fundamentally liars. It is a nice picture, but looking back it is very deceptive.
