They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but after you read this, you will see a million words in the photo on the cover of this book. Those words won’t be what you read inside this book. They will be all the emotions you feel while reading it. Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings by Chrysta Bilton is most definitely a case where truth is better than fiction.
Imagine you are ready to have a child. Whether due to infertility, genetic traits you don’t want to be passed on, being in a same-sex relationship, or not having a partner, if you or your partner want to experience childbirth, you find a fertility clinic and eventually look into using a sperm donor.
This scenario allows you the opportunity to create your own family.
That’s what happened to Chrysta Bilton, author of Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings. She wasn’t the one to go to the fertility clinic, but her mother, Debra, was. Although Chrysta wasn’t conceived via sperm donor (the moments leading up to her conception couldn’t be any more different), that was her mother’s first choice as she was a single lesbian living in the 80s.
Chrysta grew up in southern California with her mother, younger sister, and various other adult figures in her life, jumping around from some of the most wealthy cities in the area to living in an office building because that’s where rent was cheapest. As you can imagine, this caused Chrysta to grow up way too fast, as she quickly realized she needed to be there for her little sister.
Debra’s fight with sobriety came to a low point when she practically gave Chrysta’s sister up for adoption, only to find her younger daughter in a very questionable situation with her soon-to-be adoptive father. Chrysta and her sister went through so much change with new schools, new places to live, and new lovers of her mother. While there were long periods when Debra was sober, anyone familiar with addiction issues knows this can be a battle in itself.
Chrysta ended up settling down after college, but now that she and her sister are adults, you would think things with her mother would calm down. They did, addiction-wise. But now, something new has come up.
Plot twist: How would you feel if every few months you were notified you had a new sibling?
That’s what eventually happened to Chrysta. Once Chrysta and her husband had a place of their own, her mother moved in with them. At her mother’s request, and to get her off her back, Chrysta completed a DNA test. The results were connected to Chrysta’s email, and one day, she had a message waiting for her on her account. With her curiosity piqued, Chrysta found a message from someone asking how they were related. This is how Chrysta’s journey to discover her hidden family began.
My Thoughts
Honestly, I feel like the only person on earth who hasn’t done an ancestry DNA test. My whole immediate family has done these kinds of tests (the adults, anyway), so that makes me question why I need one. What is in mine that I haven’t already seen in my parents’ or siblings’ results? Sure, mine wouldn’t be the same as theirs, but the gist of it must be there. But somehow, this book has me wanting to do one of my own.
As a mom in today’s world, I thought we had it bad by being attacked with “hey girl” messages every week to join another MLM. Well, this happened in the 80s and 90s too. Haven’t we learned from this? Not. But funny enough, Chrysta’s mother was involved with a number of these companies. Although she would make a good amount of money from them, they always ended at some point, which contributed to a very unstable childhood for Chrysta and her sister, showing us that money isn’t always going to be there with these companies and that they can be shut down at any moment.
I am also fascinated how half-siblings who have never met could be so similar, and not in looks or genetic makeup, but attending the same specialty school (years apart) on a different continent from the one they grew up on, or even in their preference of house pets.
Many of us have a parent with substance abuse issues, including myself. While I realize my childhood could have been far worse in this area, my heart truly breaks for people who went through worse times from their parents’ addictions.
If memoirs are your thing, get this book. Even if they aren’t your thing (I can count the number of memoirs I have read on one hand), get this book. It will open your eyes to a life you could only imagine living and give you an understanding of things you had no idea you needed.
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