Personal Post Time: Learning About Me - Adoption and DNA

While the majority of what I post here on Making it Happen nowadays deals with books, I wanted to share a glimpse of my own story that's been unfolding this year.  With all the craziness of 2020, I wanted to add something positive from my life beyond books, and hopefully make you smile.

I’ve known from a very early age that I was adopted.  My parents never hid this fact from me, wanting me to know I was chosen and loved.  The thing is—I was adopted from birth, and so I’ve never known any other parents but my adoptive ones; they were always Mom and Dad to me.  No feelings of “oh I’m not their real kid” or anything even coming close to that.  They are my parents, I am their daughter, my brother is my brother.

From time to time, my mom would ask if I was curious about my birth parents, and I always said no.  Same with friends who asked.  I was okay with not knowing and I was happy with my life.  I never had any visceral need to know, and never really thought about it.

What I did know about the circumstances of my birth and adoption is the little my parents were told and passed on to me—that my birth parents were very young, and that I was of German descent.  It was a closed adoption, and in Florida that means everything is sealed and cannot be opened without a court order or consent from all parties…not that I was ever interested in going that route.  Like I said, I’ve lived a very good life and never wanted to change anything.

What I was interested in was knowing my genetic heritage.  I’m a science nerd all the way, even going so far as doing the pre-professional (aka pre-med) biology track in college because I was thinking of becoming a genetic counselor.  I loved my classes, especially my genetics class and corresponding lab.  I find it all endlessly fascinating even to this day.  

Was that “of German descent” correct?  What other nationalities/ethnicities composed my background?  I’d seen the ads for the DNA kits that you could send in to be tested and finally in late 2018 when I was looking through Amazon’s Black Friday deals I saw 23andMe had their Ancestry + Health kit for half of what it normally cost.  I figured, “hey, why not?” and ordered a kit.  

Now, I can sometimes be an awful procrastinator and while I had put the kit on my kitchen counter when I got it to remind me to do it, I wound up putting it in a drawer when cleaning up and forgot about it.  When I’d open up the drawer for something and see it, I’d say “oh yeah, I need to do this”, and put it back out on the counter.  Rinse, repeat multiple times.  It wasn’t until after I moved to a new place and did the same thing again and again (though in the bedroom this time instead of the kitchen) that I finally picked it up, saw the expiration date was about 3 or 4 months away, and said “just do the dang test!”

And so I did.  They received the kit near the end of April this year, and I had my results back a little over a week after they received it (they being 23andMe).  I was surprised it was so quick since I’d heard it could take several weeks.  Of course I immediately clicked to go see the results.  It’s pretty intriguing since it’s broken down by percentage, here’s what mine came out to be:

I was expecting the German part given what my parents were told, and was pleasantly surprised by the British & Irish (maybe that explains the pull I feel to keep going back there whenever possible).  Since I had gone with the kit that also checked health markers, there was a section showing conditions that I might have a slightly elevated risk of developing (“health predispositions”) as well as my carrier status for many diseases (thankfully all of these showed I did not have the variant, so am not a carrier for any of them).

There was also a section for research where you can answer a bunch of surveys to help them determine health patterns and behaviors linked to your DNA (with your permission of course—they are very big on privacy, as they should be).  I’m a survey taker…checking boxes is my thing…so I did all of them.

Finally, there was a section for “Family & Friends”.  Now, I’m a pretty intelligent person.  But for some reason up to this point, my mind never connected doing the DNA kit with my family since hey, I was adopted so I won’t match with my family.  *HEADDESK* moment…duh.  So I clicked that section and it came up with links to a family tree and a list of over 1400 DNA relatives, with some of them labeled as “close” relatives.  When I checked this section, there those 1400+ people were listed, all of them marked as cousins.  The vast majority were anywhere from 3rd cousins to “distant” cousins (meaning more than a 6th cousin).  But there were a handful that were 2nd cousins or 1st cousins once removed…and one 1st cousin.  Meaning one of her parents were either an aunt or an uncle to me.

Now I’m a really laid-back person, and my reaction was “wow, that’s cool!”…no freaking out or outbursts of excitement, I just thought it was pretty neat.  But since I wouldn’t know anyone on the list, I didn’t do anything else with that information, just clicked around checking people out.  There was also a map that showed where everyone lived if they had made that information public in their profile.  Once again—I just found it all fascinating, but didn’t do anything else with the information.

About six weeks after my results posted, I received a message on Facebook from someone I didn’t know, and then another from someone else a few days later.  I didn’t realize I had received the messages since they went into that black hole known as the “Message Requests” section and I didn’t get a notification.  They had both also sent messages on 23andMe, but I hadn’t logged in for a bit so hadn’t seen them.

Anyway, I connected with them both on Facebook—one was the 1st cousin and the other the 1st cousin once removed.  They were both trying to figure out how I was related to them, so I told them the very little that I knew.  After much back and forth, they were pretty sure they had figured it out, and that my birth father was the 1st cousin’s uncle (he has unfortunately passed away).  They were all excited at this point, and arranged talking to who they were pretty positive was my birth mother.

All of the narrative of her side seemed to match up with the time and place of my birth, and it would have been an incredible coincidence (like beyond crazy odds) if we weren’t a match.  Me being the science girl I am, I just asked if she could do the test as well just for that final level of proof to satisfy my need for scientific confirmation.  

It was a match.  After all these bits of luck and meandering procrastination, I had a match with my birth mother.  And oh, by the way…at least couple of half brothers (one on each side) as well, possibly more.  So, what next?

So far, I’ve been messaging with the cousins and my two half brothers, but have not messaged or spoken directly with my birth mother yet.  As my continued luck would have it, I have a vacation I’d already planned only a few hours away from them soon, so we’re looking at meeting in person then.  

Is it all a lot to take in?  Absolutely.  Me, I’m just going with the flow and looking at this as a chance to expand my family (apparently by a LOT).  I did let my immediate family know what was going on; my brother and sister-in-law have been following along right along with me, but I just told my mom once I found out the test results were a match.  As I’m sure you can guess, that was pretty emotional for her.  But like I told her—she is and will always be my Mom, and nothing will ever change that.

We’ll see where things go from here, but I think it’s pretty much guaranteed to be an interesting ride ;-)

I know not everyone in my situation would have the same experience or luck that I did--ancestry.com actually has a larger database than 23andMe, so if you're actually looking for family and want to improve your odds, you may want to try them first, or if you're able then do both sites.

All of the 23andMe links in this post are clickable and have my referral link if you want to get a kit through them.  If you purchase using that link, you should get 10% off the price of the kit (US only) unless they have a better promotion going at the time, then you'll get the better promotion price.  I picked mine up on Amazon; if you want to get yours there they have both the Ancestry + Traits kit and Ancestry + Health kit available (the health one is what I did, and yes those are affiliate links).