I seldom heard from my father. We had never been close, but when he was 94 years old, he left me a brief voice message.

“I have something important to tell you – something very personal and private,” he said.

A feeling of dread swept over me.

Was he ill? Had I done something wrong? We never shared anything that was “personal and private.” Even his suggestion to meet by Zoom surprised me. When did my father start using Zoom?

I agreed to talk to him, and when I signed into Zoom, he was already there waiting for me. He appeared nervous and had difficulty directly looking at me. It took him a moment to get started.

“When I was a medical student, I worked at a pioneering fertility clinic,” he said. “On several occasions, I donated sperm. A year ago, I was contacted by a woman who thought I might be her father.”

He took my stunned silence as an invitation to go on.

“I know this is a shock, but it appears that I fathered over a dozen children through sperm donation.”

“Oh my God,” I barely managed to reply.

“Yes, they had been searching for me — well, not for me at that point, but for their father,” he said. “They found each other on one of the DNA websites, shared their stories, did some research, and narrowed it down to me.”

My father was a highly renowned OBGYN and researcher. He was a brilliant man, capable of great charm and humour, who, even at the age of 94, remained astute and worldly. His children were thrilled to have discovered him, and he soon found himself the object of fascination of these newly acquainted offspring.

My father revelled in these relationships, basking in the loving light they cast. He held Zoom meetings with them, corresponded with some over email, and met others in person.

I learned this had been going on for almost a year before he had his Zoom call with me, and that he had become particularly close to one of my new half-sisters. She adored my father. He told me that she said she had never experienced such a quick bond with another human being. They described each other as “soulmates.” They even had loving nicknames for each other — he called her “Dollie” and she called him “Poppie”.

This was hard for me to take in. The father I knew was full of rage and violent. Taunting, threatening, blaming and shaming were the currency he used with our family. His nicknames for me during my childhood were “bitch,” “birdbrain,” and “moron.” As the family scapegoat, I was beaten. I thought I was so “bad” that I didn’t believe I was worthy of having weight on this earth. I was anorexic for much of my adolescence, and when I was a freshman in college, I tried to kill myself.

“Self Portrait, Age 13,” a charcoal drawing made by the author in 1966.

My healing journey included years of therapy and recovery. Though my relationship with my father was complicated and tenuous, I loved my father. Despite the way he often treated me, he had always been supportive of my passion for creating art. Even in his 90s, he continued to help me with my website. He could still be unpredictably demeaning and cruel, however, and our interactions were stiff and formal.

I could understand why he had waited to tell me. These new relationships presented him with the chance to have a do-over – an opportunity to reset his self-image as a father. I’m sure he feared that I might say or do something to........

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