Looking in a mirror you see a reflection of yourself, but do you know who you really are? It’s a question that has plagued Patricia (Trish) Clarke most of her life. The BC resident is an accomplished visual artist, speaker, retired entrepreneur, and award-winning author of The Unknown Sister: A Memoir For the Search For the Truth of My Paternity.
“I always wondered what my true paternal identity was and why it was a secret,” she says. With her intuitive senses, she joined Ancestry.com to find her paternal roots, which led her to writing her memoir.
While growing up, Trish spent a lot of time with her grandmother who introduced her to needlework and then to Trish’s true passion: painting.
“I always wanted to be a painter,” she says. “When I was about eight years old, I was with my grandmother at my great grandmother’s house. My grandma and her sister were sitting on the chesterfield, which had a nude painting behind it. I was sitting across the room from them, pretending I wasn’t looking at it. ’Cause, you know, you shouldn’t be looking at that stuff,” she laughs.
“I was drawn into how to do that. It was so fascinating! At my house, there was no paint or anything,” recalls Trish. “My grandmother who spent a lot of time in my life was hand smart. So, I learned all those things. There’s a crossover between painting and doing needlework; the needlework came first.”
At age 29, a dear friend inspired Trish to take a drawing class at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Fast forward 40 years and her paintings of landscapes and flowers are sold worldwide.
In the recent book, Pursuit: 365 Trish writes about her paternity, “I felt my soul had been raped. Half of me was gone. I always knew in my gut that the man I was told was my father was not my birth father.”
She had found her adoption papers. She had misattributed parentage and she never told anyone she knew. That is when Trish decided to join Ancestry.com and begin the long process of finding her paternal family and filling in the holes in her identity.
The day she met her brother, Monty, Trish sat in a coffee shop anxiously awaiting his arrival. When he swept in the door, she stood to greet him. Without an exchange of words, Monty embraced her. She wept. As the two held each other tightly, Trish says she felt a soul-level connection. She felt safe, calling the moment ‘sacred.’ It still stirs her emotions today.
“I am now almost three years into my relationship with my new family,” says Trish. “One of the things that I greatly appreciate about them is that they have never vilified my mom. I did not have to defend her. This brought me a great deal of peace.”
Trish also had a sister – who passed away in 2013 – she did not get the chance to meet. Still, there is a connection between them that transcends the physical world.
“My sister, Leah, was a very spiritual person. In the painting [on the cover of The Unknown Sister], there’s one sunflower looking up and one sunflower looking down. The symbol for spiritualism is sunflowers. The spiritual meaning of gold is indestructibility.”
If there’s one thing Trish would like readers to take from her book, it’s the power of truth in our lives.
“The truth will set you free to be your most creative, authentic self,” she says. “The truth gave me a profound sense of peace that I did not know was possible. My journey was not just about finding my truth, but I wanted to set Mom free from the secret she was trying to keep. It is never too late to heal.”
The Unknown Sister: A Memoir For the Search For the Truth of My Paternity by Patricia Clarke is available on amazon.ca or https://patriciaclarkecreations.com/
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