Woman’s life goes into a ‘tailspin’ after learning the truth about her dad who put her into foster care at 14

A woman’s life went into a tailspin after she discovered that the man who put her in foster care at the age of 14 was not her real father.

Christie Werts, from Ohio, had always led a seemingly difficult life – from being the only little blonde girl in her family to becoming a foster child at the age of 14 due to her parents’ addiction problems – she always knew she was different.

But it wasn’t until she was 50 years old that some of her lingering questions were answered through a DNA test, proving that life is not always what it seems.

‘My whole life flashed before me. I was like, ‘My God, this guy was worthless to me, and he wasn’t even my dad,'” Werts said. People in an exclusive interview.

“My whole life, this man who put me in foster care and who was so horrible to me growing up, wasn’t even my father.”

Her dysfunctional upbringing began as a young child when her mother left her and her brother in daycare, only to resurface in scattered appearances years later.

Parental responsibility fell to the man she had known only as her father, with whom Werts never felt fully connected. She was more sensitive, more driven and had difficulty with his acceptance of their life that consisted of so little.

But the most striking difference was her appearance: her cleft chin and lighter skin tone were not shared by other relatives within her Spanish family.

“I just grew up in a very Mexican family and I was like a random white kid,” Werts told the outlet.

“Even when I went to playgrounds as a little kid, my dad would have the police come to him because I really didn’t look like my dad at all.”

She eventually entered the system as a 14-year-old girl, leading to her developing trauma that eventually permeated her adult life and then motherhood.

Her father treated her differently until the end of his life. He even went so far as to lock her out and leave everything to her brother while he was on his deathbed.

It wasn’t until he died in March 2024 that she finally decided to reevaluate their rough relationship, despite still feeling love and sadness for the person she had always thought was her father.

Still, she bought a DNA test from 23andMe.

“I was like, ‘Man, I wonder if he’s even my dad.’ He just treated me badly my whole life,” Werts said.

“I was also just curious about what other family was on my dad’s side… We only knew a select few people,” she added.

“So I guess it was a bit of curiosity, but I still didn’t expect what turned up.”

Her mother had always claimed to be half Mexican. So when the DNA test revealed she was actually Italian, British and French, she was left with even more questions.

A month after her father’s death, she released a book titled “Life’s Sad Story, God’s Love Story: Transforming a Child’s Adversity Into a Tale of Love.”

But her newfound success led to a new turn in her life after an estranged aunt called her after its release.

“She called me when my book came out, and she said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but you’re not a real Mexican. Your father may be Mexican, but there are rumors that your mother was not our father’s child. ”, Werts recalls.

That call made her question her mother — who didn’t get sober until adulthood and died when Werts was just 28 — and wonder what she was hiding.

With both of her parents dead, she knew she needed a more thorough DNA analysis to learn more about where she came from and decided to send her sample to Ancestry in hopes of connecting with more relatives.

But the second test revealed what she had always suspected but never really expected to learn: turning her life upside down overnight.

Early one morning she opened the results and discovered that a complete stranger, now in his seventies, had been her real father all along.

“It showed a ‘parent-child relationship’ and mentioned the name of this person who was not my father,” she said. “My heart came out of my chest when it showed up.”

Werts called the man without hesitation, solely with the intention of discovering her own backstory.

‘He doesn’t remember my mother. It was a one-night stand in late 1973. They met at a bar,” she said. ‘And then he got married. He’s been married for fifty years.’

As if discovering her real father wasn’t complicated enough, she discovered she had blood relatives. Her biological father eventually had children almost a decade after she was conceived.

“He’s almost completely devastated because he was a good father to his children,” Werts added.

But his newfound existence, although sudden, confirmed so much for her and helped her understand the trauma she had been working through for years.

‘My biological father and I have so much in common. He is very sensitive and very caring,” Werts said. “We were both in the military, and no one in my other family was in the military.”

“I always thought I looked like my mother, but now that I see pictures of him, I look more like him than anyone,” she added, noting that he also shared her cleft chin.

“It’s just crazy to see these people you didn’t even know, and you look like them.”

It took her a while to break the news to her brother and the other family members that she had grown up with her all her life.

But when she finally did, she received love and acceptance from everyone – even her brother, who assured her that she was still part of the family.

“In a way, it’s a little healing after wondering why I always felt a little different,” she continued. ‘I feel the confirmation, but then I also feel sad… What if he knew and I was raised differently?’

The unexpected chapter of her life opened new wounds and closed old ones, but made her reflect on several aspects of her life, including the “little relationship” she had with her mother.

Werts remembered the way her mother joked about her paternity, leading her to the ultimate conclusion she must have known all along.

“She just left me with a man who wasn’t even my father,” she said. “And then I ended up in foster care, and it turned out he wasn’t even my father.”

Her cultural identity also changed dramatically after she realized she had to come to terms with the inaccuracy of her Mexican heritage.

“I identified everything with being Mexican,” she said. “I had a very large Mexican family, even though I didn’t look like everyone else. Then you suddenly have to mourn a little, but for that identity.’

The downward spiral only continued when she considered whether or not knowing her real father earlier would have taken away her childhood pain.

But even as she remembered the pain of being rejected as a child — including swearing off the foster care system as an adult — her past came back into her life in a funny way, but also helped her do something good.

She ended up adopting her current husband’s ex-wife’s baby just before his second birthday in 2023 after she sadly passed away due to substance abuse issues.

Werts understood firsthand the monster an addiction could become, and she didn’t want the innocent child to end up in the same system she found herself in.

“Becoming a foster parent when you were a former foster child was a bit of a healing and emotional time,” she reflected.

After all, she hopes to one day meet her real father in person.

“It’s certainly a very strange place to be,” Werts said. “If I knew what I had now and had to relive it all again, I’d probably do it again.”