Man believed he was adopted for 18 years — then discovered his 'older sister' was his biological mother
It can be quite a hard thing to discover that your family has been keeping a secret from you. Especially, when everyone around you knows about it. A man discovered a difficult truth that the person he considered his older sister for 18 years is actually his mother. The person, Steve Lickteig knew that he was adopted and thought that his grandparents were his parents and thought that his mother, Joanie Lickteig was his older sister as per TODAY.com. The man shared his story and the impact the discovery made on his life.
The man found out the truth about his biological mother at 18. Before that, he thought that he was one of his parents nine children. "My two best friends from high school told me the night before my high school graduation," Lickteig revealed. The family lived in a small community and most people knew about Lickteig's sister but chose to keep it to themselves to respect the family's privacy. "I held it in for another month and a half, and then I confronted my parents — my grandparents — about it," the man recounted. "Then, being an 18-year-old and angry, I ran away. Got into a car and drove to the nearest town, which was 20 miles away, rented a motel room, got drunk with my friends." His sister finally found the motel's address and called him.
"We had a moment of, 'Yes, this happened. I'm sorry. I was mostly silent. And then we didn't talk about it again for another 15 years," the man shared about his conversation with his sister Joanie. "Part of it was the time of this, which was the early '70s and also (it was a) small town, a tight-knit community. The community members who knew, who didn't say anything, were just trying to be good neighbors," the man went on. "I would say that it's not the best, but it's not horrible, either," Lickteig commented on the the secret that was kept from him. "In fact, we exchanged voicemail messages around (doing) this today. But we haven't talked in a while directly. She does send birthday cards to my children."
"We're building something over time, but it takes a long time to get to another place and we've just been trying to make that happen — but maybe a little too slowly for her," the man continued. His sister wants to be a grandparent to his kids now and he is on the same page. "It's just been hard for me. I feel like we are ultimately going to be in a good place," he highlighted. Steve is the youngest of his nine siblings. The man expressed that in hindsight he felt that the truth was pretty obvious, but at the same time he didn't really know anything about it until he came to know about everything.
The secret was kept to protect Joanie, the family's name at the time and to protect everyone in the family as per the man. It was a close-knit Catholic community several decades ago in Kansas and a daughter getting pregnant was looked down upon. Lickteig has come forth now to help people going through similar circumstances. "I'm so happy to be able to help other people who have stories like this. Your life doesn't have to be destroyed over something like this," the man emphasized.