When a stranger reached out to a woman named Lane, she learned the tragic truth about her family origins. The stranger urged Lane, who posts content on the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok as LaneIsCool14, to share the incredible story that broke her family apart. After the stranger’s message of truth reveals the shocking reality of her upbringing, Lane cuts off contact with her mother and does not plan on speaking to her again anytime soon.
The stranger contacted Lane on social media and urged her to take a DNA test. After taking the test, Lane learned that the man she thought was her biological father was not really her father. Instead, the stranger who reached out via social media happened to be Lane’s biological dad. This reality made Lane cut off contact with her mother because the woman kept up a lie for decades just to keep Lane in the dark as to who her real father was.
“About a year ago now, on January ninth, I get a text message telling me to get a DNA test from Ancestry, and I think it’s fake,” Lane reported on TikTok. “I FaceTime my friend, and I’m like, ‘Listen to this.’ And she’s like, ‘I swear my gut is telling me this is real. You need to respond.’”
Lane was shocked by her friend’s suggestion but decided to reply to the man who promised, “this is not a spam message.” The stranger suggested, “I think it’s really important that you take a DNA test from Ancestry.com and review your DNA matches. Good luck.”
When Lane asked the person to identify themselves, they replied, “I wish I could say, but it’s best to just let you do the test. Were you able to do it yet?”
Lane replied back that she had “already done a 23andMe test the year before because it was on sale.”
“I was hoping I was going to find that I was like secretly exotic or related to royalty, but I’m just English and Irish like I thought I was,” she explained of the 23andMe test that did not reveal her DNA matches.
The person who contacted Lane on Facebook had created a burner account to keep their identity a secret. They had contacted both Lane and her husband about her taking the DNA test from Ancestry.com to see if she had any matches that were uncanny.
“You have other family you might not be aware of,” the stranger texted Lane without any proof. “Obviously, I called my mom immediately, saying, ‘What the f**k,’” said Lane. Her parents divorced when she was nine years old.
“My mom always told me this story that she was an alcoholic and my dad was a cheater. So, when I called her, she said, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about. I had an affair.’ I almost fell off my f**king chair. She had an affair with a guy ten years younger than her when she was in college.”
Lane’s mother was thirty-five at the time and had a fling with Lane’s biological dad, who was twenty-five at the time.
Lane ordered the Ancestry.com test and found her biological dad.
“So I message him immediately, and he lives in California. He’s British. What the f**k? He said my mom sent him a Christmas card when I was two years old, saying my name in it and that he’s googled my name ever since. In 2007, my name popped up, and he saw a picture of me, and he knew immediately that I was his daughter.”
Lane added, “So what did he do? He followed me on social media my entire life. He watched me date my boyfriend, get married, has babies, everything, all from the outside, not able to know me.”
Lane has blocked contact with her mother, and the man who raised her as his own knows that he was not her biological father.