Superhero Origin Story

Rachel, “Rayray” to many of her friends, is hilarious and good-natured. She is also  donor-conceived. Her journey began with a surprise half-sibling result after a DNA test,  and a difficult conversation with her mother.

Like many Donor-Conceived Persons DCPs, particularly those from the early years of sperm donation, she had  never been told about her genetic origins. Rachel shared that she handles her  discovery with humor because as her son says, “it’s like a superhero origin story!”

Rachel is wildly funny, determined not to let the trauma of a late discovery change her too much. It helps that Kelly Grace and Laura found her bio father very quickly—in a  matter of hours it was discovered that he was an orthopedic doctor (many of the first donors were medical students looking for a quick payday) who even worked at the hospital where she was born. But identifing her donor is not the end of the story.

Rachel reached out to her donor several times with no response, one of the difficult realities many DCPs have to face. One of the hardest parts, she expressed, was seeing the similarities finally in someone that she never saw growing up.  She is a ski patroller, he was a skier for Dartmouth College.   Her son looks just like him and is also pursuing a career in orthopedic medicine. The genetic mirroring is a source of relief and sadness for Rachel —with no response to her reaching out, it’s like an open-ended answer. A story, but with a  page or two missing.

Using her story to drive it, Rachel even provided written testimony to the legislature in  Colorado as they prepared to bring up a Bill banning anonymous gamete donations.

I asked her if, in the end, she was satisfied with her current conclusion. She answered,  “Satisfied? I don’t know if I’d say that. I’m working every day to identify peace. When  anger or sadness flares up, I try to remember compassion, for myself, for what I’ve been  through, and for all of my parents, in different ways. I don’t think I’m satisfied, and I  don’t know that I can fully forgive them just yet, but I am able, at this point, to try to  identify peace.”