We didn’t really understand what was going on around us when we were kids. Those memories start to make more sense as we get older. We may learn new things about our family or past that we didn’t know before. We feel like we have a whole new view of our lives.

I found out I was adopted when I was four years old. I was always told that it was a closed adoption, so no one knew who my biological family was.
When I was 13, I saw that my grandmother had a picture of a little girl who looked a lot like my twin. No one could remember who it was. When I was 17, I learned that my adopted dad’s childhood friend was actually my real grandmother. That’s why the picture on the wall looked so much like me. this is learningprof24 on Reddit:

Before I was about ten years old, I didn’t know that I had a cousin. It turned out that he was diagnosed with leukemia as a child. I was a very sensitive child, so my family decided to wait to tell me until the treatment worked. © reddit user monopoppi

I saw my dad’s car go by while I was on a school field trip in the ninth grade. It was in the middle of the workday and far from his office. He didn’t see me, but it was him and a woman I knew from work. In about 5 or 6 years, my parents split up, and a year after that, the same woman moved in with him. It had been going on for a long time, and no one knew. From lzy_qa_guy on Reddit

There are five brothers and sisters in my dad’s family. All but one of them are married and have children. Since I can remember, she has always lived with my parents and me.
I just recently learned that she is my dad’s biological mother. He’s never met his real dad. He became a brother to my grandmother’s father and lived with them. His real mom (my grandma) never spoke to my dad about it. There’s a big problem there. from insp1red90 on Reddit

I’m the only one of the four girls who can have children naturally. It wasn’t until I was 24 that I found out. My mom told me not to ask my newlywed sister when they were going to have kids until then. I can now see why my parents were so badly unprepared to talk to me, the third daughter, about periods. It was something they had never done before. © Reddit user BeepBeep_ImAsleep

I had no idea that my dad’s “vitamins” were actually medicines for seizures. Since I can remember, he’s been taking them. I didn’t find out the truth until I was 23. This is OneHelluvaUsername on Reddit.

Everyone in my family knew that my dad had a second family, even cousins who were 8 or more years younger than me. The secret was kept from me for years, even after my parents split up and he married the “other woman.” Even though Mom knew, they didn’t tell me he was leaving until the night before I started my first year of high school in a new city. From SoundingWithSpiders on Reddit

My mom told me about a guy she liked when she was younger, before she married her dad. He wasn’t at all like my dad. This guy was blonde, but my dad is Italian.
My siblings and I all look Italian, but I don’t. My hair is blonde and my eyes are blue. No one told me, but I’m interested. From Windbiter on Reddit

My dad used to get me up at 9 a.m., feed me breakfast, and then lead me out of the house while locking the back and front doors from the inside. I could only go to the bathroom or get a drink before I could go back inside when the streetlights came on.
“You’re not just hanging out at home all day,” he would tell me. He was just getting me to play outside for a few hours, so my stepmom never asked him about it.
It took me years to figure out that he only wanted me to leave the house so he could watch hockey games by himself. I never really thought about why he kicked me out since the other kids who lived on the street were outside at the same time. From AkKik-Maujaq on Reddit

My grandmother on my mom’s side didn’t want anything to do with us when we were kids. When I asked my mom why, she never gave me a clear answer.
After many years, a family friend told me that my dad had dated my grandma at first but broke up with her for her daughter, my mom. From Bladerunner54 on Reddit

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