After graduating high school in June 2018, my parents revealed a truth that completely altered my understanding of myself: my siblings and I, as triplets, were conceived using an egg donor.
In an instant, my older sister transformed into my half-sister. My mother’s best friend, whom I had always seen as an aunt, was now my biological mother, making her children my half-siblings. I learned that I wasn’t 100% Filipino, as I had always believed, but instead, half white.
It felt like my life had turned into a soap opera. For months, I spiraled into confusion. I spent entire days staring at the ceiling, barely eating, and wondering why my parents had kept such a significant secret from me. “Why did you wait so long to tell us?” I asked my mom. Her responses—“You wouldn’t have understood,” “You weren’t ready,” and “Life just got too busy”—never offered any real comfort.
Now, looking back, I don’t know if anything could have made accepting this new reality easier. Family doesn’t always equal genetics—I understood that then, and I understand it even more now. Still, the emotions of confusion and shame surrounding egg donation are persistent. Every time I pressed my mom about her fertility treatment, our relationship grew tenser. She accused me of being overly dramatic and said I wasn’t moving on quickly enough. The more I asked, the further we drifted apart.
I acknowledge that I took the news the hardest among my siblings. I was always sensitive and had a deep trust in my mom—she was my favorite. My triplet sister, on the other hand, had always sensed something was different. So when she learned the truth, everything finally made sense to her. As for my triplet brother, he was mostly upset by the fact that our parents had kept the secret for so long. But for me, my life felt like a puzzle with pieces missing. It took me years to accept my identity as a donor-conceived person.
Fertility treatments are more common than ever. With women starting families later and reproductive technology advancing, stories about celebrity pregnancies and fertility struggles are all over the media. Treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF), intrauterine insemination (IUI), egg or sperm donation, and surrogacy are more accessible than ever before.
However, alongside this technological progress, a growing movement of donor-conceived and adopted children is speaking out. We emphasize the importance of knowing our biological origins as early as possible.
I am one of those children. I understand the emotional toll that secrecy about one’s conception can cause—mistrust, anxiety, feelings of betrayal, and depression. When my mom delayed telling me about my donor-conception, it strained our relationship. After months of tension and arguments, she told me that she had “done her job” raising me and kicked me out of her house. The consequences of withholding the truth were far-reaching, and it took me years to process the impact of that secrecy on my life.
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