“I had a secret brother. We were only told about him when I went into middle school because my mom forced our dad to. She was afraid we’d meet and start dating without knowing.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

NOTE: There are mentions of suicide, infanticide, domestic abuse, murder, sexual abuse, and sexual assault. 

"Cut to much later in life, when I had my DNA done on one of those sites and found some relatives. The whole story came out.

I was too young to remember this, but my parents got divorced when I was a toddler. My mom was about to lose custody of me and my younger brother due to abuse. She decided to pay my father back for leaving her and just disappear with us. That was why we constantly moved and didn't seem to have relatives. She always used the last name of whatever boyfriend she was hooking up with at the time when registering us for school, and when the schools couldn't track down our records from our last school, we would disappear and move again. Apparently, my father had tried to find us many times, but it was fairly easy to disappear back then. I am 67 now and still get flashbacks to suddenly understanding now some strange thing that happened back then."

"Also, in 2019, I found out I have a Vietnamese sister my father fathered when he was in Vietnam. He'd cheated on my mom four months into his one-year tenure there; I still haven't met her yet."

"I always had a weird feeling being around him, but he never did anything inappropriate to me. And yeah, he was heavily involved in the Pentecostal church and was involved in a couple of other Christian organizations. He died 15 years ago now, but it has always bothered me that nobody said anything. I've cut them all off because they're all pretty toxic."

"The worst thing is that my mother and her siblings speak about it like it's a normal thing that happened because he was a man and it was accepted back then. I am disgusted to this day and will never see my grandparents the same way EVER again."

"I found out years later that his guy had tried to sexually assault Emily and she beat him so badly that he ended up in the hospital. She was maybe 13 at the time. I’m still not sure if my great-aunt was the one who divorced the guy or if he ran for his life as soon as he could walk again."

"No one would tell me anything except show me pictures of my cousins. My older sister did tell me she remembers my aunt's husband being around after they moved away from our dad."

"In reality, that last cocaine hit on Saturday constricted the artery one last time and closed it. If he hadn't done it, he'd probably have been rushed into emergency surgery and had a stent placed that Monday, and be alive today.

My mom finally admitted that, yes, he did it consistently. He was a truck driver, so it energized him, too, to do his job better, and eventually, truck driving worsened his dependency on the drug. He had gotten a new job as a trainer right before dying and would have regular 9–5 hours; relocation was required so we'd be away from the negative influences. He was going to start getting help to quit fully and had heard about a new drug that helps with addiction."

"When I was an adult, my mother got drunk (which she never does) and told me that her mother hated him because he was in the military, and they had to move away from her affair partner for several years. She took it out on my mother until my grandfather found out, and then she started taking it out on him."

"I always knew my dad would prefer my beautiful little sister to me, but I didn't expect he would be so indifferent as to be willing to sacrifice me for wealth."

"It turns out that my grandfather poisoned my grandmother after she confessed to abusing my mother for nearly all of her childhood during a fight they were having. He used some old rodent poison he'd had in the basement and slipped it in her tea. She eventually became ill and showed signs of dementia; she was put into specialized care, where they diagnosed with environmentally caused ALS. She passed shortly after going into care.

He confessed to my mom and her younger brother when it was suggested by the care facility that he get his pipes, groundwater, and soil tested. He acted agitated, which made them suspicious. After they learned the truth, my uncle got rid of the poison and the teacup he'd used. What's funny is that I inherited the teacup set, and it is indeed a cup short.

My mom expressed a lot of guilt over it. She felt horrified that her father, in her eyes, killed for her, and she also felt a lot of guilt for not feeling sadness for her mother.

I ended up burning the letter just because I felt like my mom would've wanted that."

"Just after he died, my aunt divorced my uncle. At age 12, I overheard my other uncles talking about a vow they had made to keep me from being a victim of Grandpa. At 16, I figured it out. The uncle who had murdered him was a jeweler who used cyanide in jewelry making. Grandpa drank a 36-pack of beer every night. I suspected he injected cyanide into a random beer. My aunt saw Grandpa alive at 2 a.m. My uncle woke up at 5 a.m., and grandpa was dead and stiff. His body was cremated, and my uncle vanished. I mentioned my suspicions to my cousin, who relayed them to his father.

Three years ago, my uncle was dying. He reached out to me and told me I had correctly figured out how grandpa died. He waited until he was dying since there's no statute of limitations for murder."

"She sabotaged him by draining their joint bank accounts, racking up tens of thousands in credit card debt, kicking him out of his house, and getting him fired from his job, eventually forcing him into retirement. With him unemployed, he couldn't afford to pay child support, leaving only my mom's income, which was barely enough to support us. Basically, if she hadn't been so vindictive, we wouldn't have wound up in such dire financial straits.

It's pretty telling that my dad never spoke ill of her; he just said that he was blindsided and confused by her choices and jealous of her current partner. On the other hand, my mom only ever said negative things about him."

"So my grandpa went with it. He chased her out of the house with a kitchen knife, all in front of my aunt, who was luckily too young to remember any of this. Needless to say, that was the end of the marriage and the end of my horrible person of a grandpa being involved in his kids' lives."

"I can never tell anyone, our 'family' is so far gone anyway, but the younger ones don’t deserve this burden. I’m the only person who knows all of this, other than my parent, and it weighs heavily on me. I just wish I could hold my grandfather and tell him how sorry I am. He was the best man I've ever known. He deserved better."

"I recently found out 40 years later that my mom actually overdosed back then in an attempt to kill herself. She did end up killing herself by a fatal overdose when I was 28. Then, when I was 40, I was informed by an attorney that my dad also killed himself. Both were destitute and couldn’t face their demons. To me, it all originated from that lie when I was 12."

"It would have been nice to know my family, especially my siblings. I was raised as an only child with no real extended family, and as much as I would love a close relationship more than anything, we're not all close. 

I know she could have tried to see me or build a relationship, and he was doing what he thought was best to protect me (he was sort of right…), but he's gone now, and so is the majority of my family, so it hurts being alone knowing that I have immediate family out there."

"Thankfully, the DNA test I took showed I wasn't, but it was a frightening possibility. He'd fought in Vietnam and was 'honorably' discharged the year I was born. Come to find out, he was forced to retire because the Army found out about the charges against him. 

I found out when, as an adult, I rented a property to him. He got drunk and was talking to me about being worried about not being able to move. When I asked why, he just bluntly said, 'Because I’m a registered sex offender. I was in jail for two years after you were born because I was having sex with your mother.' To say I was shocked was an understatement. This was a man I regularly had let watch my two boys. And to make matters worse, that meant the state Child Protective Services, knowing he was a sex offender, placed me in his home as a preteen. My mother confirmed the story and said it was consensual (yuck). After the DNA test was clear, I cut the entire family out for keeping me in the dark. 

The sad thing is, that wasn’t the only revelation that night. Come to find out, he had been sleeping with my ex-wife before he got with the woman he was moving in with."

"A few days later, I asked if my aunt had a son before my cousin. Turns out, it was after. My mom was 16 and left home to help with the kids in Chicago. Apparently, my aunt was dating a mob guy who was married and abusing my aunt. My mom's solution was to get rid of the kid so that my aunt could be safe. As long as the baby was alive, this guy would be in her life. 

My cousin didn't even know she had a brother until she was in her thirties. They got rid of all his pictures and things, and he was just erased from their lives. The Chicago police ruled it an accident. My mom said she walked in, and he was pushing against the screen and fell out. The idea that a six-month-old baby was both tall and strong enough to push a screen out of a fourth-floor apartment window seems ridiculous to me, but she got away with it. My aunt told me what really happened and, to be honest, I'm not a bit surprised. That woman is a monster."

"The only reason my Nan and great-aunt ended up with different men (my Nan with my granddad) is that a distant relative found out about the incestuous affairs and contacted the brothers' higher-ups to report their marriages (they were in the military). They were dishonorably discharged, and the news of why spread. It became a public shame, which led to divorce. My Nan's brother/ex-husband hung around even after she remarried to my grandfather, who knew everything. Sadly, it's come out since his passing that she never really loved my granddad, and she was never happy with him. She was severely abusive to my mom and her siblings, save for the eldest. 

I found out through my aunt. One day, she was looking through an old trunk she found in the attic, and she discovered a collection of paperwork, photos, and certificates, including the birth certificates of deceased children belonging to my Nan and her brother, along with one for the surviving child, their eldest sister. She spilled the beans to my mom and their brother, and it's since made its way down the line."

"But I rarely think about the situation. I know I was blessed to have a much better life than I would have had if he had been in it."

"She obviously did it so as not to appear to have born a child out of wedlock (it was the early '80s, so I guess there was still a bit of stigma about such things). I went 40+ years before I discovered her secret."

Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.

Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.

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If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.