Father and Son: A Life Unraveled

Parents want to give their children everything––a nice house, cool clothes, good food. They do everything they can to make their babies happy and healthy, but what if they don’t? What if they can’t? What happens to the poor child if one of you, one parent, suddenly disappears? Or what if you were never really there at all?

Recognizing the emotional and psychological effects of growing up without a Dad can be hard. Getting inside the mind, heart, and soul of a young boy is even harder. For Barry, the challenges, disappointments, heartbreak, and difficult lessons he faced without a father figure made him into the man he is today, but that doesn’t mean his journey to adulthood has been an easy one.

Trust me. My name is Barry Finn, and this is my story.

I spent nearly all of my childhood not knowing the true identity of my biological father. For the first 21 years of my life, my family deceived me and told me my father was someone else, someone I’d thought was close to me. It wasn’t until I turned 22 that I learned my real family history and began to unpack the trauma I had experienced as a kid.

After getting adopted, finding a wife, and facing my family’s lies, I spent the next few years of my life trying to track down my biological father, desperate to learn more about myself and where, and who, my dad really was. Little did I know that I was entering one of the most arduous, heartbreaking, and rewarding adventures of my life.