Was today a rough day for you? Think the last few years have been riddled with misfortune and failure? Think about this story from Valerie Spruill out of Ohio, originally reported by the Akron Beacon Journal, and then reassess what you may be going through.
At just 3-months-old, Valerie was sent to live with her grandparents, who raised her. Spruill was told that her grandfather was her father until the age of 9, when she was told the truth. She also found out that her mother had actually been someone she had always thought was just a “family friend”. All the while, nobody ever made mention about or pointed her towards who her real father was, she said.
Later on, she met a man by the name of Percy, who she would end up marrying. What she did not know, was that this man was her biological father. Devastating to say the least. Back in 2012, she finally went public with her story to the Akron Beacon Journal. Valerie found out the heartbreaking news of the family secret back in 2004 when she was 52-years-old. Six years after her husband-father passed away.
Spruill claims that she heard murmurs of the rumors concerning her husband being her actual father. However, it wasn’t until an uncle of hers told her. According to her, “half of Akron” knew the truth. If there was any doubt left within her, a DNA test in which she had found hair from one of his hairbrushes provided concrete confirmation that the man she had married, her late husband, was indeed her biological father.
Percy met her mother when she was 15. Since learning the news, she had been dealing with a lot of health issues including diabetes. “Pain and stress will kill, and I had to release my stress,” Spruill said. “I’m just telling the story to release my pain.
“It is devastating. It can destroy you,” Spruill told CNN . “It almost did.” She also believes that he knew, but couldn’t find the strength to tell her the truth. “I don’t know if he ever knew or not. That conversation didn’t come up,” she said. “I think if he did know, there is no way he could have told me.”
Hard as it absolutely has been for her, Spruill is hoping to change the narrative. “I want this to be more of an inspirational story,” she said to the Beacon-Journal. “If I’ve come through this, anyone can come through anything through the help of the Lord.”
Valerie insists that, especially for her healing, “It needs to be told, because children need to know where they come from. And I know it hurts, because I have been devastated by this,” she said to the paper.
“And you have to see that blessing that God gave you and accept that hand. Because everybody’s dealt a hand, and it’s not always good and it’s not always bad,” she told the Beacon-Journal. “But if you live that hand that God gave you, it’s gonna be all right. It’s gonna be all right. Yes, it is.”
