Dear Prudence,This spring I found my biological father and his family for the first time. The man I thought was my father died when I was 13, and he obviously preferred my half-brothers to me. I also didn’t get along with my stepfather when my mother remarried when I was a teenager. When I was 19, I went through some of my mother’s papers and found my real father’s name. I found him, and he and his wife were both wonderful. My father told me that he dated my mother long ago, but after she left, she lied to him about me. A DNA test confirmed we’re related, but my mother continued to lie to me after I confronted her with the truth. She finally admitted it but accused me of invading her privacy and going “behind her back.” She asked me to lie to my brothers, but I refused.
I moved out. I refused to stop seeing my new family, even though my mother told me I was embarrassing her. I see my father, stepmother, and sisters regularly. It is such a relief to have them in my life. My father has offered to pay for my school, and my stepmother has invited me for the holidays—they are welcoming, warm, and kind to me. Now I don’t know how to forgive my mother. She keeps lying and saying she did what she thought was best for me and that my stepfather loved me like I was “his own.” When I tell her how cold he always was to me, she tells me I am remembering wrong. I miss my brothers, but I can’t see my mother without seeing red. She wants to play pretend again, and I won’t do it, but I don’t know what to do.