36 People Share Dark Family Secrets That Finally Made Sense When They Became Adults

I found out when I was in my early 30's that my mom hadn't only had 4 kids, but actually 6 but gave 2 up for adoption before I was born. Also, i was the last baby she had with some rando before she married my stepdad and she had intended to give me up for adoption, as well.
Silver lining? One of the babies she gave up contacted her a few years after I learned about this and now I have an awesome new brother!

Circa 1994 My dad passed away(32) on Christmas Day. Instead of his family consoling my now single mother of 2, they decided it would be more appropriate to use their spare key to enter our house and clean out all his belongings while we were picking out a tombstone. All his tools, clothes, pictures (he was a model). Thennnnn grandpa on dads side takes my mom to court while she’s mourning to try to prevent her from using his life insurance to raise us ( sister and I were 5 and 6 at the time). He wanted all the money to be set aside until we were 18. Judge pretty much threw his case out. Needless to say, my mom distanced herself from his side I don’t speak with them either. Found this out when I was like 20.

I discovered that my siblings and I grew up in foster care since no family members were willing to help my aunt and uncle get custody of us. We were in Missouri while they lived in Michigan. They fought the courts with what means they had but couldn’t afford the legal battle. The system thought our mentally ill mother was the best choice even though we would only be home with her for a few months before going back into the system. Rinse repeat until my sister and I at 15&16 were homeless. Luckily we had an older brother that was adopted by a great family and found us. Sent some bus tickets to Detroit to come stay with him and showed us kids what unconditional love was.

My grandmother recently died. She was famous in our town for her amazing cooking and catering. Notably, her gravy was absolutely amazing. So delicious. She had a heart attack several years ago, and that experience convinced her to share some of her secret recipes with me — all except her gravy recipe. When she passed away this spring, I was going through her pantry and found an entire bucket of KFC gravy mix. She was literally using KFC gravy mix as a base to make her incredible gravy. Huge scandal.

My great aunt was a nurse supervisor at a mental hospital in the 1920s. She fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated for a criminal trial. She helped him escape and they went to Florida. But the police caught up with them. My aunt got off easy, but he got the electric chair. I found all this in a newspaper archives while working on family history. Showed it to my mom and she admitted it was all true.

My aunt didn't lose her teaching job due to budget cuts like she'd always claimed. Turns out she had never had a valid teaching license to begin with, regularly had affairs with the dads, and embezzled PTA money!

That was not a tomato plant growing in a pot that I couldn't tell my friends about.

My grandpa was a residential school survivor, I had no idea most of my childhood.

DNA ancestry website told us that my staunch Polish Catholic family were Jewish until (approx) 1939.

Not sure if it classes as a family secret, but it sure surprised some of us.

That my parents cheated on each other. When I was young, My parents both worked at different times, and rarely were together at the same time at the house. And my mom would always bring over my dad's older brother. And my dad would bring my mom's Younger sister. They found out about each other's affairs, and they laughed it off, while I was in the corner with my Older sibling, Crying more than If a gamer lost all of his progress in a small mistake. And now, My mom married my uncle, and my dad married my aunt, And their Friends, And I have 3 half siblings now, And we all live happily in The Confusing US Of A.

My mother's potato soup was so good because it was mainly butter and cream with a few pieces of potato.

My best friend growing up was actually my half brother that my dad had with a family friend.

I grew up Mennonite. My mother had at least 4 children by other men so there would be less inbreeding. I was 1 of them.

That we weren't really poor; rather, I wore ratty clothes, never got any toys, and would frequently go hungry simply because my mom just didn't care about me. I was 18 when my mom told me that she started to panic when she had less than 50K in savings, this was in the early 2000s Bright side, it taught me not to buy stupid things. Darkside, nostalgia for games/toys/movies/trips etc. doesn't exist.

I thought I had a half-sibling that my parents refused to discuss. Based on my mother reading books about adopted children finding birth parents, and also she graduated a year later than her her twin sister, because of rheumatic fever. I wondered if it was "romantic fever". My dad passed away in 2006. In 2009 my mother called to tell me that my father had another daughter, and she'd just made contact with my mother. It turns out my father abandoned a pregnant girlfriend before he met my mother. He did tell my mother about the sordid affair but swore her to secrecy. So yes, I was right. Stunned to be right, but happy. My sister is my best friend now.

My uncle was actually my cousin. He was kidnapped as an infant and when he was returned a year later, my aunt didn't want him back. My grandparents adopted him so he was legally my uncle.