Personal Stories

Donor conceived people hear this a lot. And sure, on paper and in my heart he is, but he’s not in the nucleus of my every cell. He’s not in the chromosomes of my children, no matter how hard or how long I wished he was.

Those who pose existential questions like this cannot imagine the traumatic and confusing situations that many donor-conceived people regularly experience, and they are unable to see that the question itself is rude, hurtful, and irrelevant.

“Your parents are the people who raised you,” says everyone who has a complex about that particular thing. I agree. They are. But so is he.

I have an unknown amount of siblings. I just found a new brother. I can’t contact him. I want to know him. I mean, why wouldn’t I? He’s my, from what I can see, baby brother.

For most of my life, I have known that I am donor conceived. Yet now that I can look back from this point in time, I see myself as living with thick blindfold over my eyes. Growing up, I didn’t really have any remarkable emotions when I thought about my biological father.

What’s wrong with donor conception? I don’t even know where to begin. To start with, apart from having no medical records, being conceived by ‘artificial insemination’ is just weird.