Photo: @laneiscool14 / TikTok
She has cut ties with her mother.
By NyRee Ausler — Written on Dec 13, 2022
A TikToker by the name of Lane recently shared a story about how she found out that her life was one big lie.
It all started about a year ago when she got a text message from a number she didn’t recognize.
The stranger's message suggested she go to Ancestry.com and take a DNA test.
Skeptical of the random correspondence, Lane asked, “Who is this?”
The person responded, “I wish I could say, but it’s best you just do the test. Were you able to do it yet?”
Still believing the message was fake, Lane contacted a friend who had a gut feeling it was real.
Her friend thought she should take the test just to see what happens.
Lane decided to start talking to the unknown messenger, telling them that she had already taken a DNA test via 23 & Me.
She said that the DNA test she had taken showed her to be English and Irish just as she had always expected.
The person claimed that Ancestry had a separate database, prodding her to take a test there as well.
But they also claimed, “It’s not really my place to get involved.”
Despite that, the person that contacted her went as far as making a fake Facebook profile where they continued to message both Lane and her husband.
Lane’s parents divorced when she was nine years old and she remained close to her mother, despite the woman’s history of alcoholism.
Lane was skeptical, so she called her mother to ask if she knew what this could possibly be about.
To her surprise, her mother openly admitted to having a weekend affair with a 25-year-old when she was 35 and in college.
This caught Lane off guard due to her mother’s prior claims that the man Lane had known as her father her whole life had been the cheater.
Her mother told her that the young man had suspected he was her child’s father and asked about it, but she had denied it and moved on.
With this new information, Lane immediately ordered a test.
Six weeks later, the results came in and she found out the man her mother had a short-lived romance with was her biological father.
She messaged the man who now lived in California, but was originally from Britain.
He told her that her mother had sent a Christmas card with her name on it when she was just two years old.
Since that time, he had Googled her regularly and when her face finally popped up in 2007, he knew immediately that she was his child.
When he tried to reach out, she told him that her daughter was mentally unwell and would “harm herself” if she ever found out.
He settled for following Lane’s life on social media.
Lane explained the story more in a second video.
In the follow-up video, she shares that ironically she attended beauty school in California in 2008, where he lived.
If anyone commented on her features, her mom would blame them on her alleged father’s family, which was hard to disprove since many of them had died.
Since the DNA discovery, Lane has found out that she has two little sisters around her own son’s age.
There were also some commonalities between the names she and her biological father had picked out for the kids.
The man is a marine biologist, a career Lane seriously considered before settling on beauty school.
She was astonished by how much she just happened to have in common with her father.
He had watched her from afar primarily on Facebook until 2022 when the message was sent.
Lane now believes her cousin — the son of her newfound dad’s brother — sent the messages.
This uncovered secret broke an already fractured relationship between the TikToker and her mother because of the “lying, betrayal, and manipulation” required to keep the information under wraps.
Still, Lane is hurt by the separation from her mom, a woman who she was extremely close to growing up and referred to as her “soul mate.”
She then went on to detail what happened when she finally met her biological father.
After talking and messaging for a couple of months, her father asked to meet.
He recommended that their families meet, but she insisted they get to know each other one-on-one first.
Lane says she wanted to go in with an open mind and no expectations but was subconsciously hoping her father would swoop in and “fix” her.
She imagined what she would do if she were in her father’s shoes.
She expected this emotional moment where her father doted on her beauty, but it was nothing like that.
He avoided eye contact and seemed disinterested in what she had to say — she felt he was cold.
Lane recaps the meetings by saying, “Our interactions made me feel confused and invalidated.”
She spent five days visiting and they met up once or twice a day to hang out.
The conversation felt like she was pulling teeth.
When the last day rolled around, the realization that the relationship was not as expected made her emotional.
She went to his house on the last day and was hurt by watching him interact with his other daughters, so went into the bathroom and cried.
In an interesting twist, the cousin that sent the original messages had gone through the exact same experience.
According to Lane, there is even another child in the family in the same situation.
She ends by asking herself, “What is wrong with them?”
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington, and author of seven books. She covers lifestyle and entertainment and news, as well as navigating the workplace and social issues.