My Not Parent Expected Survival Strategy

The only thing constant in life is change. - Heraclitus 0:04 Good evening and welcome to my humble podcast abode. I am Cocoa Griot, just a 50 something who is amped to talk to you dear listeners about life, love, and a hodgepodge of other topics. When you go through your entire life feeling like you are a genetic fluke, it undermines your self-esteem in ways that are hard to describe. I never wanted to take pictures with my family, because it was always a reminder of how I didn't look like my siblings. I didn't like to hear people constantly say that my siblings looked exactly like our dad, and then there was me. This weighs on a child when people are constantly mentioning the fact the child doesn't look like everyone else. So here I am 55 years old before I find out exactly who I'm supposed to be. From this day forward, I live my life, knowing that I wasn't some kind of random, genetic fluke, I look like someone. I look like my biological father. 1:02 Tonight I want to talk about the NPE survival strategy, I've been working on since I talked with you guys last. NPE stands for not parent expected. If you listened to my episode last week: Mama's baby Daddy's maybe. I'm not who I thought I was, you know that Ancestry.com shared a truth with me that my family hid for years. My NPE survival strategy. The truth set me free, but it made me miserable too. The first component of my NPE survival strategy is the family that I have known and loved for years, and my friends. People that I shared this information with really stepped up and let me know they are here for me. My aunt's reiterated that there's nothing different about how they see me, even though this newfound information was shocking. They reminded me that I grew up loved and nothing is different about that. I was grateful for the outpouring of love and avenues that are researched as part of my survival strategy was to join groups of people like myself. These groups helped me immensely. The groups are Togetherness Heals- NPE Only, DNA Surprises Support Group