A central Arkansas woman said she was 13 when she snooped through her mother’s locked cabinet and found papers that upended what she knew about her family.
Bailey, username @heyitsbailey08, shared the story in a TikTok video titled “My adoption story, how I found a bio dad and lost a bio dad twice.”
“I found out I was adopted when I was 13,” she said. The account was based on her own telling and was not independently verified.
The Woman Said She Ignored the Signs Until She Was Home Alone
Bailey said her parents got married when she was about 1 and she never questioned the story she was told.
“My dad was my dad and I didn’t know any different,” she said.
She said she later saw clear signs, including that both of her parents had brown eyes while she had blue eyes.
She remembered a sixth-grade lesson on recessive traits and said her teacher was probably thinking something was off, but she never connected the dots.
“I probably should have had more questions,” she said.
Her mother was 17 when she gave birth, she said, and her dad was eight years older than her mother.
Bailey said she was born in December 1989. She added, “I was home by myself and just being nosy and bored.”
She went through her mother’s desk and found a key to a locked cabinet. Inside, she found her birth certificate and her adoption papers.
The adoption papers were not signed until she was 6, she said, even though she had always gone by the last name of the dad who raised her. She said her legal last name was her mother’s maiden name until then.
Her Mom Rushed Home and Explained
Bailey said she called her mother at work in a panic, in an era before cell phones and was transferred through a receptionist.
She asked her mother for the name of the man on the papers, then said, “Who is this?”
Her mother immediately responded, “What? Why? I’ll be right there.”
The drive normally took about 30 minutes, but the creator said her mother must have driven “like a bat out of hell.” When her mother arrived, she explained that she got pregnant in high school.
Bailey said her biological father was dating another girl at the time and was about to leave for college on a football scholarship.
Her mother told her she never pushed the issue because she did not want to share her with anyone. She said her mother had one conversation with him and did not speak to him again until she married the man Bailey called her dad.
After that, her mother reached out to him so her husband could legally adopt her. She said her mother told her he refused to sign for years in case he changed his mind, until sometime in 1996.
Search for Her Biological Father Took Two Turns
Bailey said she asked to find out who her biological father was.
“I just wanted to know about my family,” she said.
She said living in a small state made her worry about meeting a relative by accident or missing a family medical history. Her mother reached out to the man she thought was her daughter’s biological father and he initially didn’t want to meet her because no one in his family knew she existed.
He was still married to the girl from high school at the time, per Bailey. She met him when she was 18. She believed he was her father for four more years, she said, and had a relationship with him.
A DNA test showed the two were not related.
Her mother then remembered another man who might be her father. A second DNA test confirmed he was her biological father. Bailey said she didn’t have a relationship with him and didn’t try to contact him.
How Viewers Reacted
The video prompted viewers to share their own adoption stories.
One viewer said, “1. She kept you. 2. You were adopted. Your adopted father, in my opinion, is your REAL father.”
Another wrote, “My husband and I both have brown eyes and our son has blue eyes. Him having blue eyes was a 6.25 percent chance but not impossible. My husband and I both have a parent with blue eyes.”
One viewer shared, “I was born in 1965 and we have very similar experiences! Arkansas included!” Another shared, “My husband found out his dad was not his dad when he was 50!”
Many noted that eye color is not a confirmed biological trait, as many biological parents with brown eyes have had children with green or blue eyes.
