A Simple DNA Test. What Could Go Wrong?
I've always been super in to history, especially my family history. I've grown up LDS my whole life. People in the LDS church are taught to do genealogy at a very young age and are encouraged to do it through out their whole lives. I am the only one in my family who really took to it and enjoyed doing it. I love learning and thinking about where my family came from, what they did, what hardships they had to over come. I love thinking about how they looked, what I inherited. I've been curious to their personalities, their likes and dislikes, what was passed down to me. I have always felt my past family members had a little something to do with the shaping of me and in turn I felt that I would have that same effect on those coming after me.
I have always had an exceptional interest about my father's side. I always felt an extreme connection to my paternal grandfather. My paternal grandfather died when I was only 1-year old but I felt a certain love for him and I believed he did me as well. Over the years I have discovered all sorts of neat things about my paternal grandfather and his service in WWII, things no one else bothered to find out. I also discovered all sorts of cool historical facts on his family tree like a grandfather who was Lord Mayor of London during the reign of King Henry VIII, one of my favorite people in history. I enjoyed sifting through old photos discovered on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com on all sides of my family tree to find a resemblance to myself, my sisters, or my own children.
This hobby naturally led me to the DNA testing companies. How cool that in our day in age we can spit in a tube, mail it off, and for a nominal fee find out our ethnic makeup as well as connect to 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins? Shoot we might even discover some fun surprises. Something unexpected in our ethnic makeup or a long lost 1st cousin we never knew about. I had toyed with the idea of doing one of these DNA test for about 3-years. For whatever reason I never ordered one. Then in mid November 2018 after some prodding from my children, my in laws doing a DNA test, and my own curiosity of my ethnic make up I ordered 2 Ancestry DNA kits. One for myself, and one for my husband. They arrived a few days later and then they sat in our room for a couple of weeks unopened. I just wasn't in a hurry to do it. I don't know if this was a subconscious decision or not but I just didn't want to send them in. Eventually my kids bugged me enough and so my husband and I sat down one afternoon in December and spit in our tubes, gross. We packaged them up and the next day the hubby dropped them in the mail. The results arrived much sooner than Ancestry had promised. On December 28th my husband's arrived first. There was nothing surprising about this ethnic makeup. There was no long lost relative he discovered. It said his dad was his dad, his aunt was his aunt. The results were fun but nothing exciting. On December 29th my results arrived. I was super excited to open them. I looked at the ethnicity part first. I was pretty evenly split on my Northwestern European and Germanic ethnicity. No surprises there. However I was caught a little off guard by the fact that I was showing a decent amount of Swedish, a touch of European Jewish, and disappointed to not see any Eastern European. While doing my dad's lineage I had discovered that many hundreds of years ago his family had been from Czechoslovakia. Not seeing that on my ethnicity results make me think I had messed up somewhere on the family tree. None of this was alarming though, a little fun actually, European Jewish?! I shared my results with my parents, they acted interested and that was that. I then looked at the DNA Matches section. On there I noticed a 'Close Family' section. I was unsure of what this meant, especially since I didn't recognize the names. I also saw a 1st cousin I didn't know, could this be a long lost 1st cousin?! I did see a couple 2nd cousins I did know and a ton of 3rd cousins and beyond that I didn't know. All in all I didn't think much of it. I was confident in who I was, who my parents told me who I was and lets face it, we were smack dab in the middle of the holidays. I didn't have time to pay it any more thought.
December 31st I was at my in-laws home celebrating New Year's Eve with my husbands family. They are such a fun group of people and we always enjoy getting together. They are a loud, ruckus bunch, the extreme opposite of what I grew up with. It was early evening and everyone was enjoying themselves. I looked at my phone and I saw an email notification. I opened my Gmail app and it was from Ancestry telling me a DNA match had emailed. Cool, how fun! I opened it and what I read shook me to the core and completely changed my history and my future. It was from a woman and it read: "It looks like we’re close matches so I’m assuming we’re half siblings. My father was a sperm donor in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1984. I’ve found 3 more half sisters and a half brother who’s parents also used the donor at the same clinic between the years 1980 & 1998." What the hell? Was this a joke? Did this even mean what I think it does? I had to be reading this wrong. No way my dad isn't my biological father! I closed the email and I just sat there shaking, literally shaking. My mind wasn't even working right. I felt like I was in a tunnel, the voices around me were muffled. All the chaos going around me sounded and felt a million miles away. I just sat there in total shock. It was a feeling I have never ever felt before. I never really understood what the saying, "I felt like I was in a dream" meant before. That evening I knew exactly what that meant. Eventually I got up and went to my husband and told him I needed to talk to him. He could tell by the look on my face something was wrong. We went out into the garage where it was quiet and we could be alone, mostly. I handed him my phone and told him to read the email I had pulled up. He did then looked at me, speechless. I asked him if it means what I think it does, that my dad is not my dad? He quietly replied that yes, that is what it means. I just fell apart. I was shaking, my mind was racing but it was empty at the same time. I was going through the motions of crying but was not actually crying. I felt like a living Lifetime movie. I've watched these type of Lifetime movies, or 'movies of the week' on TV since I was a little girl. I loved them. I never could imagine finding something like this out like the characters in the movies did but thankfully I was raised by loving parents who were both my biological parents so it could never happen to me. Right? Wrong!
What does one do with this information? My brain was not capable of processing this. A half-sister? No way, I have 2 full blood sisters. My hubby and I went into the house before people came looking for us. My 4 kids knew right away something was wrong. I went and sat on the couch and pulled up my Ancestry DNA results. There under DNA matches, under 'Close Family', was the name of the woman who had just emailed me as well as 4 other people. Two half brothers and two more half sisters. (I will later find out that there is another half sister not on Ancestry.com but on 23 and Me). I am one of 7 half siblings who all took a DNA test for fun and had their lives shaken. Of the 7 of us only one knew since she was a young child, the woman who contacted me. Another one was told at 18, and the rest of us found out from Ancestry.com or 23andme.com. Sadly one half brother is still in denial. His parents continue to hide the truth from him and I'm sure it is easier for him to believe his parents than some strangers on an Ancestry.com DNA page.
That evening while everyone else was celebrating the end of 2018 I was Googling how reliable these commercial DNA tests were. Surely they were just for fun and not to be trusted right? To my dismay they are incredibly reliable. Ancestry.com has tested millions of people's DNA and so far has never made a mistake. They haven't cross contaminated, switched spit tubes, attached wrong information to the wrong account, nothing. To this point they have been perfect. I so desperately wanted there to be a more reasonable answer to all this than, your dad is not your biological father. How does one, at the age of 38 cope with that sort of information?
I have always had an exceptional interest about my father's side. I always felt an extreme connection to my paternal grandfather. My paternal grandfather died when I was only 1-year old but I felt a certain love for him and I believed he did me as well. Over the years I have discovered all sorts of neat things about my paternal grandfather and his service in WWII, things no one else bothered to find out. I also discovered all sorts of cool historical facts on his family tree like a grandfather who was Lord Mayor of London during the reign of King Henry VIII, one of my favorite people in history. I enjoyed sifting through old photos discovered on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com on all sides of my family tree to find a resemblance to myself, my sisters, or my own children.
This hobby naturally led me to the DNA testing companies. How cool that in our day in age we can spit in a tube, mail it off, and for a nominal fee find out our ethnic makeup as well as connect to 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins? Shoot we might even discover some fun surprises. Something unexpected in our ethnic makeup or a long lost 1st cousin we never knew about. I had toyed with the idea of doing one of these DNA test for about 3-years. For whatever reason I never ordered one. Then in mid November 2018 after some prodding from my children, my in laws doing a DNA test, and my own curiosity of my ethnic make up I ordered 2 Ancestry DNA kits. One for myself, and one for my husband. They arrived a few days later and then they sat in our room for a couple of weeks unopened. I just wasn't in a hurry to do it. I don't know if this was a subconscious decision or not but I just didn't want to send them in. Eventually my kids bugged me enough and so my husband and I sat down one afternoon in December and spit in our tubes, gross. We packaged them up and the next day the hubby dropped them in the mail. The results arrived much sooner than Ancestry had promised. On December 28th my husband's arrived first. There was nothing surprising about this ethnic makeup. There was no long lost relative he discovered. It said his dad was his dad, his aunt was his aunt. The results were fun but nothing exciting. On December 29th my results arrived. I was super excited to open them. I looked at the ethnicity part first. I was pretty evenly split on my Northwestern European and Germanic ethnicity. No surprises there. However I was caught a little off guard by the fact that I was showing a decent amount of Swedish, a touch of European Jewish, and disappointed to not see any Eastern European. While doing my dad's lineage I had discovered that many hundreds of years ago his family had been from Czechoslovakia. Not seeing that on my ethnicity results make me think I had messed up somewhere on the family tree. None of this was alarming though, a little fun actually, European Jewish?! I shared my results with my parents, they acted interested and that was that. I then looked at the DNA Matches section. On there I noticed a 'Close Family' section. I was unsure of what this meant, especially since I didn't recognize the names. I also saw a 1st cousin I didn't know, could this be a long lost 1st cousin?! I did see a couple 2nd cousins I did know and a ton of 3rd cousins and beyond that I didn't know. All in all I didn't think much of it. I was confident in who I was, who my parents told me who I was and lets face it, we were smack dab in the middle of the holidays. I didn't have time to pay it any more thought.
December 31st I was at my in-laws home celebrating New Year's Eve with my husbands family. They are such a fun group of people and we always enjoy getting together. They are a loud, ruckus bunch, the extreme opposite of what I grew up with. It was early evening and everyone was enjoying themselves. I looked at my phone and I saw an email notification. I opened my Gmail app and it was from Ancestry telling me a DNA match had emailed. Cool, how fun! I opened it and what I read shook me to the core and completely changed my history and my future. It was from a woman and it read: "It looks like we’re close matches so I’m assuming we’re half siblings. My father was a sperm donor in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1984. I’ve found 3 more half sisters and a half brother who’s parents also used the donor at the same clinic between the years 1980 & 1998." What the hell? Was this a joke? Did this even mean what I think it does? I had to be reading this wrong. No way my dad isn't my biological father! I closed the email and I just sat there shaking, literally shaking. My mind wasn't even working right. I felt like I was in a tunnel, the voices around me were muffled. All the chaos going around me sounded and felt a million miles away. I just sat there in total shock. It was a feeling I have never ever felt before. I never really understood what the saying, "I felt like I was in a dream" meant before. That evening I knew exactly what that meant. Eventually I got up and went to my husband and told him I needed to talk to him. He could tell by the look on my face something was wrong. We went out into the garage where it was quiet and we could be alone, mostly. I handed him my phone and told him to read the email I had pulled up. He did then looked at me, speechless. I asked him if it means what I think it does, that my dad is not my dad? He quietly replied that yes, that is what it means. I just fell apart. I was shaking, my mind was racing but it was empty at the same time. I was going through the motions of crying but was not actually crying. I felt like a living Lifetime movie. I've watched these type of Lifetime movies, or 'movies of the week' on TV since I was a little girl. I loved them. I never could imagine finding something like this out like the characters in the movies did but thankfully I was raised by loving parents who were both my biological parents so it could never happen to me. Right? Wrong!
What does one do with this information? My brain was not capable of processing this. A half-sister? No way, I have 2 full blood sisters. My hubby and I went into the house before people came looking for us. My 4 kids knew right away something was wrong. I went and sat on the couch and pulled up my Ancestry DNA results. There under DNA matches, under 'Close Family', was the name of the woman who had just emailed me as well as 4 other people. Two half brothers and two more half sisters. (I will later find out that there is another half sister not on Ancestry.com but on 23 and Me). I am one of 7 half siblings who all took a DNA test for fun and had their lives shaken. Of the 7 of us only one knew since she was a young child, the woman who contacted me. Another one was told at 18, and the rest of us found out from Ancestry.com or 23andme.com. Sadly one half brother is still in denial. His parents continue to hide the truth from him and I'm sure it is easier for him to believe his parents than some strangers on an Ancestry.com DNA page.
That evening while everyone else was celebrating the end of 2018 I was Googling how reliable these commercial DNA tests were. Surely they were just for fun and not to be trusted right? To my dismay they are incredibly reliable. Ancestry.com has tested millions of people's DNA and so far has never made a mistake. They haven't cross contaminated, switched spit tubes, attached wrong information to the wrong account, nothing. To this point they have been perfect. I so desperately wanted there to be a more reasonable answer to all this than, your dad is not your biological father. How does one, at the age of 38 cope with that sort of information?
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