Once my parents left, my questions resurfaced with a vengeance.   Maybe, I thought, the test was simply wrong. I had been planning to export my raw data and import it into a different platform anyway in order to increase my potential hits.

Right. My hits.

So what I didn’t get into the last time we “spoke” was the fact that these genetics platforms not only tell you your regional breakdowns, but they also tell you which of their other users are genetically matched to you (their usernames, anyway).

I have 131.

131 PAGES.

What was equally interesting was the fact that I already had at least two people in my “1^st– 2^nd cousin” predicted range. I had no idea who these people were. None of the usernames included last names that were familiar.

So I imported my raw data into FamilyTreeDNA (otherwise known as FTDNA, for short), to see what it had to say for itself. It ended up being under $30 to transfer in my data and gain full access to their platform. I had opened the faucet. I wanted to know.

This time, I was less surprised, better numbed.

—————————–

I paused on finished writing this for about 2 weeks. It’s now August 2^nd.

A lot has happened since I left this post. Almost too much. I mean, I’m grateful for the progress, but in this kind of situation, progress often comes with pain. It did.

I’ll get to that later.

It’s hard writing this, believe it or not. I mean, it’s good to do it, necessary, even. It forces me to bear witness to my own pain, and to work through it. To not just bottle it all up, as I’m usually prone to doing. It makes me pause, re-live, experience, and reflect on what all has happened and what it all means for me. That said, what it means for me changes all the time as I get new information, as I let the new and old information meld and settle. Marinade and blend. It changes me and my vantage point. It’s exciting at times, prickly at others, incredibly fear inducing much of the time, and certainly gut wrenching at others.

I’m usually not much of an open book. I’ve shown pieces of me to different people, but due to a lifetime of internalized stabbings to the back, I tend to leave my more vulnerable aspects to myself for safe keeping. Trust is sometimes freely given, but rarely is it a skeleton key to all of my doors. More often it’s a key to a rental to select rooms on my property, with supervised visits.

This isn’t easy.

What’s even less easy is the fact that re-hashing what has been means digging it up first, unpacking it. That of course requires finding it first, and making room for its existence again in my present life.   I have to move everything else aside, sometimes even clean that up first so I have a place to put all of this once I’ve located where I’ve safely stowed it away.

Add to that the fact that my memory likes to hide things from itself. Usually it’s the harder things to feel, although sometimes it’s just memories hidden in mass, possibly out of my mind’s laziness or even inability to discern the difference.

But there are certain things that are so core to our being that I’m not sure we can ever truly and fully hide from ourselves. Things that drive us. Things we know we’ll be coming back to, because we need to, even if we couldn’t at the time.

This search for my full roots is one of them. For this, my memory couldn’t dig a grave deep enough. And so I exhume, bear witness, and raise what was.

Then, with it again, move on.

There is so much to catch you up on, especially when every day I’d been learning more. I’ll do my best to put a hold on moving forward until I can catch you up to me, and catch me up to me, fully.

I looked at my results in FamilyTreeDNA.

The first thing I noticed was that my regional breakdown, calculated by FTDNA, was a little bit different, but on the whole very similar.

Okay, 100% European. Right. Let’s expand that shit.

“Alright, so this one seems to show a bigger representation in Western/Central Europe, and significantly more in Scandinavia. Some of Dad’s countries are in “Central” Europe. Maybe not just 18%, but there’s still some. But, 11% Scandinavian…wtf? Maybe all these websites are just bullshit, or maybe this isn’t even my DNA sample. Something else could be going on. It’s still possible.”

I headed back to my dashboard, then clicked on the “Matches” button.

I barely had a chance to skim the list—the very top match was a cousin with my great grandmother’s surname.

I clicked on his family tree icon, which was active, to be sure.  

There, on his tree, was my great grandmother.

It was my kit. My DNA. No question.

Another hit. I sucked it in. This was me, I was looking at my parts. I just wasn’t who I thought I was, and there was no denying it.

I paced the living room of my small, shotgun apartment, holding my insides in as they spilled out. Breathing in, holding me in, then against my best efforts, escaping back out. “Make it make sense. Please make it make sense”. Then, “WHO THE HELL AM I? WHO THE HELL IS IN ME? I DIDN’T INVITE YOU! Where have you been hiding?!”

I walked into my bathroom and again looked at the three people looking back at me in the mirror. “Who else is here? WHO ARE YOU??” I desperately both wanted to know, and didn’t. I wanted to push this new truth out, and away, but I also wanted to know what exactly had infected my life to start with. What was this other part of me, in what parts of me was it, where did it come from, and how did it get here? Where was it, in the world, right now?

Who could it be? How could this have happened? And why, why had no one told me?   Do they both know? I could understand why they hadn’t told my brother back when he originally asked, and I could understand, a little bit, anyway, why they hadn’t told me when I asked, as a young kid, if I, like my cousin, was not blood related to my Dad.

But I’m 31! And when everything was going on with my brother, my parents TOLD me the reality of the situation, all of it. When they told me about his questions regarding our paternity (in their mind, he had made accusations about my mother’s fidelity), they were clearly distressed and angry. But they also called my brother’s questioning of our paternity “ridiculous”, never giving any hint that he was maybe in any way correct.

I’ve always had the kind of relationship with my parents where they could be straight with me. They’d tell me what all was going on in the family, trust me and my judgment when something was going on. We could be logical with one another. My opinion mattered, on the hard things, too.

So how could they not tell me this if they knew?

I knew I needed to know more, and I also knew that I couldn’t trust my parents to be the ones to give that to me. Either they had lied, withheld information from me, or there was something they didn’t know themselves (is it possible my Dad was either adopted, or his Mom had had an affair? I knew her relationship with my grandfather, who died before I was born, was at times strained). It’s pulling at straws, but it’s possible, and if that’s accurate, who knows if he would even want to know?

If I was going to find out more, I would have to first go it alone. Maybe, I figured, once I have more information confirming one truth or another, I’ll have enough leverage to bring it up with my parents in a way that they won’t be able to deny. Either way, I knew based on how they had reacted to my brother previously that chances were good that they wouldn’t be pleased with my knowing any of this or about their having to give up any more information.

But I needed it. This information was, after all, about me, my DNA. It was now mine, and after all this time, I wasn’t about to risk the possibility of their being able to build another roadblock to my knowing my full history. As much as I love them, and as much as they will BOTH always equally be my parents, I couldn’t let them take my ability to explore and know my own truth away from me.

I needed to reach out to another match.

At this point, I figured the best match to reach out to would be my closest.

Turns out that in this case, the closest one was predicted to be in the 1^st-2^nd cousin range (!), and was located on AncestryDNA’s platform.

So, I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and reached out to my new cousin. We’ll call her Jessie.

(Looking back, this was actually the day I got my results, before my parents had arrived for their (very strangely timed) visit.)

Subject: Cousins?

I had no idea if or when she would reply, or even how she would feel towards me. Here I was, some girl, albeit family, who she had never invited into her life any more than I had initially invited her into mine (wasn’t really possible for my parents to consult me on whether or not I wanted to be brought into this world this way). In my mind, I was hoping that the fact that she had also had the desire to take a genetic test meant that she, like me, was also a curious person who is interested in her roots and the vines that connect. Maybe, even though I wasn’t exactly planned by her family, I would still matter to her.

At the same time, I was scared. What if my genetic paternity was in any way threatening to her/her family, something they would want no part of? I knew that most sperm donors had donated anonymously, and many might be inclined to keep it that way (although my personal feeling was that if donating is truly altruistic and nothing to be ashamed of, why would it ever be something to hide?) Would she close me off to my search if she knew I wanted to find out which of her family members was my biological father? Fearful that I might “want something” from this person that she would need to protect? Would reaching out to her backfire, and instead create just another barrier to my seeking my truth?

All of these things crossed my mind, and all of them were a threat to my search. But I also knew that I couldn’t let this opportunity pass unchecked, and I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, she would see me as a HUMAN in need of answers, the same ones she was privileged to have herself, and not some sort of villain to be barricaded off. I had to believe that she might take even some small amount of mercy, understanding that the method of how I came into this world was never something I asked for, and that I still deserved the truth despite its possible complexities.

Somehow, after writing her, I was still able to put our correspondence away in my mind so that I could be fully present for my parents’ visit.

—–

She replied the next day.

I read her message while curled up in bed, once my parents had gone to sleep.

…

She started off her message by saying that it was nice to meet me!  (Good sign!)  While she hadn’t had much time yet to investigate, on first glance, it wasn’t immediately apparent to her how exactly we were related.  However, she did say that her Mother grew up in Camden, as did mine, so that could somehow be the connection.  From there, she told me that she’d be doing some more thorough searching in the next few days in addition to inviting me to view the private family tree that she had been working on.  Then she wished me a happy trip with my parents before signing off.

…

Apparently, she had checked out what information I had input so far on my family tree, which I had made public.

Family in Camden! My mother’s side of the family all grew up in South Jersey, right across the river from Philadelphia, in Camden County.  Shit though.  Does this mean that Jessie is actually just a relative on my Mom’s side then?  That’s not very helpful if so.

Or could my brother have been right in his scandalous accusation? Was it possible that, while struggling to conceive, she had a tryst out of desperation?

It just didn’t sound like my Mom, but nothing about any of this was normal, so how can I truly rule anything out?

The only relevant thing that I did know was that my parents had long ago talked about their struggle to get pregnant, due to my Mom’s fertility issues. I knew that she had had ovarian cysts and horribly painful cycles, and that as a teenager she ended up having surgery to have one of her ovaries removed. She wasn’t told that this was the outcome of the surgery for many years. As a result of all of this, in order to conceive, she had to be put on fertility drugs, which increased the number of eggs she released at once during ovulation. Apparently this was an incredibly painful course of treatment chock full of unpleasant side effects.

But was it possible that she was not the only one of the pair that struggled to conceive? I knew my Dad had cancer sometime before we were born, and that it had been serious—he definitely had undergone chemotherapy and radiation at least, both of which are known to have side effects on fertility. They had never brought up that his fertility was ever a factor in their ability to conceive, but maybe that was just because there was more of a stigma involved for the male partner?

I didn’t know for sure, but did know if I was right about this, and if they had used a sperm donor, that often times sperm donors were just medical students at a hospital’s fertility clinic. I had been born in a hospital in Philadelphia, PA. Camden County is just across the river. Many who live or grew up in Camden County work in Philadelphia and/or go to school there.

Could that be the Camden County connection?

It was a long day and I was dead tired. I waited a few days to respond to Jessie.

It was now Wednesday, the fifth day of my parents’ visit. We were still having a great time, although I could feel things really starting to unravel at work.

Things had already been a bit tense due to some conflicting ideas on where exactly the company should be headed and how it should be managed. On top of that, I was feeling a greater and greater sense of being micromanaged, and while I knew part of this was due to my boss’ management style when under stress (we were in the midst of significant expansion as well as some key turnover in staff), I also couldn’t help but internalize this as a blow to trust in our relationship and yet another hit to my own life’s sense of control. This was not a good time for someone to be playing with my reigns or my feeling of being contained. To make things worse, I had just realized that I’d been left in the dark on several significant changes to the organization that I felt I should have not only been told about, but consulted on. The timing could not have been worse.

I rarely took vacation time and was known for regularly working over 12 hour days throughout the week, with little time to myself on the weekends. My work ethic had never been anything to be questioned, so when I asked my boss for additional flexibility in my schedule while my parents were visiting, stating that I had just found out about some family stuff, and explaining that I might not be as quick to respond as usual, and when instead I felt that the communications and requests for my time were being ramped up, I felt incredibly frustrated, taken for granted, and betrayed.

My patience was frayed and my usually poised, professional demeanor was quickly dissipating. My annoyance with my boss wasn’t something I was able to contain at that point, either.

I just wanted to be a good host for my parents so they could have a good trip and so we could spend what time we had left as the “normal” family I had always known just being HAPPY. Soon I would be dismantling what about my family I had always known, and I didn’t know what that would feel like—I just knew it risked a lot of heartbreak down the road that I wasn’t ready for that day. Let me be with my parents a little bit longer in the way I wanted them to remain unchanged.

Jesus, haven’t I worked hard enough here to deserve that much??

—–

That night, after my parents went to bed, I logged back into my AncestryDNA account.

I re-read Jessie’s message to me, then looked around AncestryDNA’s platform to try and view her family tree. At this point in time, I was still wholly unfamiliar with the site, and had no idea how to access someone else’s tree, yet I was desperately curious to explore hers for more information. So I emailed her back.

Afterward, I put it all away in my mind again, as best I could, and went to bed.

…

That Friday, the last full day I had with my parents, my boss and I got into an argument. I was livid at everything, but agreed to meet up with her to talk more that Monday. She said she wanted to talk about the direction the company would be taking and my role in it.

Great. That just sounds great. Everything felt ominous, tenuous, and like it was just about ready to fall apart. I was dead set on not being taken advantage of. I had already been shut out of enough choices in and truths about my life, and I wasn’t about to take on any more.

I went to bed, then said goodbye to my parents and to my former life in the morning.

A few hours after my parents had left, I logged back into my AncestryDNA account.

Fortunately, perhaps sensing or even sharing my eagerness to figure out the connection, she had replied right away.

Okay! I thought. Someone actually willing to help me. Thank God.  I checked through my email, and finally figured out how to pull up her tree.

As was true for Jessie, I also saw no connection that was obvious. The names were entirely unfamiliar to me. While my mother had grown up in south Jersey, as had the rest of her known family (most of whom still live in the area today), the names just didn’t seem to add up. I replied.

It took a few days for her to respond. In the meantime, at nights, after getting done with work, I obsessively worked on building out my Mom’s side of the family tree. This would be the only way for me to tell which matches I was receiving were on my maternal versus paternal side. One of my brothers is also very interested in work on our family tree, and used to have his own Ancestry.com account with a fairly fleshed out version of ours. However, due to financial constraints several years ago and the admittedly steep price of Ancestry.com’s annual registration fee, he had to shut off his account. While we didn’t still have that resource, and I hadn’t made a decision just yet as to what I should/shouldn’t share with my brothers, I did reach out to him in order to re-build at least the maternal side of our family tree. He was living in the Philadelphia area, where my parents were, and had access to some family tree resources back at their house.

No one knew why I was asking. I felt I had to keep it that way for the time being, and not hurt anyone until I knew more. Plus, what if my brothers wouldn’t have wanted to know?

I also explored the incredibly detailed public family tree created by my match who is a cousin on my Mom’s side, the one by which I was able to confirm that the DNA sample had, in fact, legitimately been mine. From the information contained in his tree, I was quickly able to build out my paternal grandfather’s portion of my family tree. It went all the way back to some minor royalty in England, it seemed! Sir this and Lady that. Fascinating and incredibly exciting. Each hit for another family member on my tree felt like I was regaining some of my roots.

——–

Jessie replied to me a few days later, on October 22^nd.

Summarizing, she basically said that she had been looking and looking for some kind of link, but hadn’t found anything obvious just yet, and suggested that perhaps there had been an adoption in the family somewhere up the family line that was throwing our research off.  She did also mention that she saw some commonalities across portions of our family lines in terms of connections to Canada, although that was on my Mom’s side of the family.  Jessie then asked if any of my other relatives have had their DNA done, since that could give us more leads, and mentioned that she wasn’t sure if anyone else in her family had done so just yet.  If I uploaded my raw data to a database called GedMatch, we could then compare whether or not we had any matches in common, which could possibly help us narrow down new leads.

She signed off by noting how this very much was a puzzle, but that she liked puzzles, so would be in touch with more soon.

I was very grateful.

At the same time, maybe she’s also related on my Mom’s side after all? I was a bit disappointed at the possibility, since I was hoping that I was getting CLOSER to finding more information, especially now that I had found someone willing to talk.

I continued to work on building out my Mother’s side of my family tree in hopes of comparing it to Jessie’s, to see once and for all if that connection could be ruled out. Unfortunately, very little information was to be had on my maternal great grandfather’s line. I was soon feeling pretty stumped, and then got sucked back into the worst drama I had ever experienced at work.

I called lights out on my search while I tried to shut the floodgates on my increasingly stressful and overwhelming work life.

Since then, as was the case in my putting off continuing my posts, (sorry), I sort of put my search on hold for a bit.  Things got ever more crazy at work, and we parted ways.

I was in a period of transition, and figuring out who else I was when I also had to figure out paying my rent just did not feel like the right investment of time at the moment.

As I’m looking back through my email and various accounts, I see that I DID decide to get another DNA test done shortly after my parents’ visit, this time through 23andme.  Everything I had (very briefly) read up on at the time suggested that I try to get tested with the “Big 3” (AncestryDNA, FTDNA, and 23andMe) in order to increase the chances of my finding the match that would be my key to me.  Since I had already covered FTDNA through their agreement to share data with AncestryDNA, the only one left to do was 23andMe.  Given how long it took to get my AncestryDNA results back, and my strong desire to know what the hell was going on, I ordered the kit in a rush, received it at the end of October, then rushed it straight back to the company.

In the meantime, I secured a temporary position through the end of the school year working at a friend’s school and packed for my next trip home–Thanksgiving, which was just around the corner.  So many thoughts and questions were swirling through my head, foremost amongst them what and how I would tell and ask my family.  Ultimately, I was hoping that I would magically just “find a good time” over the course of the week that I would be home to pull one or both of my parents aside, and hope to God that I could bring it up in a way that didn’t cause defensiveness or backfire on my ability to learn more.

On November 20th, I boarded a plane for Philadelphia. My parents informed me that they would be away the weekend I flew in, but they’d be back in a few days, so my brother (who would be in the area) would need to pick me up.

James (name changed for the time being, for privacy) picked me up once my flight landed, and we drove back to my parents’ house.  At that point in time, I hadn’t shared what I had found out just yet, and was still struggling to decide if that was even the right thing to do, but was leaning toward the idea that it indeed was…especially since it was something he had inquired about earlier, so it seemed pretty clear that it was in fact something he wanted to know…and might even feel somewhat validated by finding out…but still, I had to figure out the right time and way to convey what I had learned.