This is a very long and involved story so I'll try to keep it short.
Recently (as in yesterday) I checked my mom's e-mail. I had innocent intentions. I just moved to college and wanted to see if she has had any communication with my dad about my money situation while I'm away. After I signed on I wanted to see if she had sent an e-mail to any of her friends about how I've been doing. The most recent e-mail I found was one that she had forwarded to her friend about a private investigator. To make a long story short, about a year ago my mom was contacted by a private investigator about a biological daughter she has that lives on the West Coast. Basically when my mom was 19 she had a daughter and gave her up for adoption. 41 years later this woman wants to get in touch with her to find out some medical history about herself. The private investigator a year later is now bugging my mom because she does not want to give up the identity of her daughter's biological father because she feels it is an invasion of his privacy. Besides the obvious fact that I am dealing with this at an obviously turbulent time in my life, having just moved away to college I have some additional serious dilemmas.
1. Do I confront my mom about this? I feel as though this is unfair because it is obviously bad enough that she had to go through this and based on e-mails I read she planned on telling my sister and me eventually. I don't know if that's true but I feel as though it's unfair to demand her to confront this at a time when she's not ready. On the other hand she has been keeping this a secret for 41 years and she cannot pretend it never happened. If she doesn't want to be a total hypocrite for instilling trust and honesty into my sister and I then she needs to confront this issue.
2. Do I tell my sister? My sister has lived her whole life thinking she is my mother's first born child so it will come as a huge shock to her. My sister is going to visit me in college soon on her way to drive back home where she will move back in with my mom. I'm worried that my sister will confront my mom with this.
3. Do I keep it to myself? This has it's obvious ups and downs.
4. Maybe I should confront my mom and tell her to tell my sister about it. What do you think?
5. I really don't know if I should keep this to myself but I feel as though I should because it was none of my business to be snooping anyways.
I'm not sure what to do. I am very confused because I don't want to hurt anyone and I love my mom and have always trusted her and respected her unconditionally but this brings so many things into question.
Any advice will do, I just ask that you are respectful in what you say.
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