Switched at Birth

Switched at birth. It’s a concept most people only see in the movies. Stranger than fiction itself with a touch of sensationalism. But for Teresa Carter of Huntingdon, that’s exactly what happened to her in 1962 in Lexington, TN.

Carter had been getting strange emails from Ancestry.com from a lady who was urgently trying to get in touch with her..  At first, Carter was very skeptical since the unnamed woman kept wanting to talk to her on the phone. But the emails continued. That’s when Carter decided to reach out.

“I had finally seen enough emails through Ancestry from this woman that I finally decided I have to find out why she is contacting me,” Carter said. “So, I just picked up the phone and called her and said, you know, why are you contacting me? What do you want from me? She said, ‘I just wanted you to know that your mom and dad have not done anything wrong. Nobody has, but there’s something you need to know about your life. And it’s that, you know, your brother and I have, have found out that you were switched at birth.’”                                                               The revelation came after the woman, and her brother did DNA testing and discovered Carter was their sibling. Carter said they’d looked at her birthday and photos of her and their mother (who turned out to be Carter’s birth mother) and found that Carter closely resembled her.

Carter’s birth certificate has her listed as being born on September 14, 1962. The woman she was switched with was listed as being born on September 13, 1962. 

“They started looking to see who I was, trying to find out more about me on Facebook,” Carter said. “They figured out that I must’ve been switched because I looked just like her. And then my son looks just like him, my brother.”

Carter said the day she found out, May 23, 2020, goes down in history for her. It’s a day she said she will never forget.

From there, Carter said, she began getting photos from her biological half-sister (with whom she shares the same father) from her biological family, which consisted of a brother, a sister and a half sister. Carter said the photos were comparisons of her photos with her biological family that she was switched from. 

“It was a difficult time,” Carter said. “I had to decide who I was gonna tell, you know, before somebody else told them.”

Carter said she struggled with the information for a while, contemplating who to tell and when while worrying about what their reaction might be. She said she painted everything at the house both inside and outside while pondering that decision. At that time, her father who she’d known as her father since birth was still living. Her mother, the mother who raised her, had since passed on.

Carter said she knew she looked different than the rest of her family and even asked her dad if maybe she had been adopted long before finding out she was switched at birth.

“My hair was light blonde and theirs was dark,” Carter said. “And I just thought I can’t be related to them. I asked my dad about it one day. He said ‘no, you are not adopted.” I brought you home from the hospital. You’re just different from them. They’re different from each other’.”

But when she found out the truth and had to tell her father, he was in total denial and disbelief. He told her he knew nothing about DNA tests and wouldn’t believe anything until she got a second opinion.

Carter said once it was confirmed that she’d been switched, her father accepted the news but made sure she knew it didn’t make a difference to him. Her father had planned to meet his daughter who was switched at birth but passed away before he got the chance. He’d wanted to make her part of the family.

As for her biological father, Carter said she knew him in business, but never knew him as her father since he passed away before she was made aware of the switch. As of now, Carter has met her biological mother and three siblings. 

Carter’s own family that she was raised with consists of a brother and three sisters. She said she is as close to that family as ever and none of them have made any difference in her. 

“I feel a lot better about it than I did,” Carter said. “Because I was just so sad to find out that I didn’t belong to all of that family that I grew up with.”

Carter said it was her faith that made her sadness go away and reinforced the idea that her parents and siblings she grew up with would always be her family.

“My parents brought me up in church,” Carter said. “And I tried to do life like they taught me, loving the Lord, doing what I think is his will for me and doing for others as much as I can. There was always happiness in our lives.”