A UK woman has recently revealed that she was shocked to learn that her parents were actually ‘siblings.’
64-year-old Teresa Weiler spoke to BBC Radio 4’s Life Changing program and made the shocking revelation.
According to Weiler, she was adopted as a toddler by a civil servant and his wife in Middlesex, London.
“It was a lovely home, and they were lovely people, never made me feel like I was not theirs,” she said.
She said her foster parents didn’t tell her that she was not their biological daughter until she turned eighteen.
“When I reached eighteen, my father sat me down and told me that they were not my real parents. I couldn’t believe it at first,” she said. “But then they showed me my birth certificate, and it had only one name, my biological mother’s. Of course, it belonged to a woman I never saw or met,” added Weiler.
“But my father’s name was not mentioned on my birth certificate,” she continued. “Which is, um, kind of weird, as normally it doesn’t happen, and when it does, we know something is not right.”
Teresa said that after knowing the half-truth about her real identity, she kept living with her adoptive parents and tried to forget about her birth parents.
But when she was in her mid-twenties, she decided to look for her biological parents and find out about her birth father.
So, I contacted social services and got hold of my adoption file… the documents revealed that my mother, O’Reilly, gave birth to me at the age of sixteen,” she told Dr. Sian Williams of BBC Radio 4.
“It was that moment when I learned that my biological father was actually my mother’s fifteen-year-old brother. His name was Sean,” she revealed.
“The first thing that happens is the shock and the revulsion and the shame because I’d grown up in a strict Catholic family where sex before marriage was even a no-no.”
“So, for me, this was off the scale,” she told Dr. Williams.
Weiler further said that she used to wonder why her biological parents abandoned her and why she was left alone like that, without the love of her real family. However, now she understands the reason.
“So this explains why no-one will come back for me, this explains why no-one wants me.”
The 64-year-old told Dr. Williams that she had been suffering from several health issues from a very young age, including arthritis, and she thinks that her progeny was the cause of her health problems.
“I didn’t think my family would still want me, I thought they would turn their back on me if they knew the truth, and I couldn’t face the shame of telling friends or other people the truth.”
“I am tainted goods,” she said.
When Dr. Sian asked Weiler how she proceeded with her life after the shocking revelations and truth bombs, she replied,
“I made a very important decision – I decided that if I had come from that background, and with all the physical and mental challenges that might make for vulnerability of children of my own, I decided I would never have children.”
“That was huge, because I dearly, dearly wanted children, that was one of my greatest wishes. But I simply didn’t feel that I could bring a child into the world knowing that just one generation previously, that had been the history,” she concluded.
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Sources: BBC Radio 4
