Alice in Mirror-Tree-Land

About a week or so ago now, I saw a post in one of the private facebook groups that I’m a part of (for donor conceived folks) where another donor conceived girl was offering her assistance in helping others find their biological families/roots.  She mentioned in her post that she had successfully helped several others recently, and now had time to take on some more cases.

I’d been waiting to pitch my “ask” to these groups for a “search angel”, as they’re called, until I was finally caught up on all of my writing…once I was able to start writing and searching again in “real-time”.  I wanted to be able to write about what was happening AS it was happening, rather than getting caught up in the search, and not taking the time to write/process it, and risking the possibility that I’d eventually become SO far removed that I wouldn’t remember exactly how I was feeling and details about what had happened by the time I decided to write about it.

Getting “caught up” took me a pretty long time to do.  I think a lot of that was because I’ve had other things going on in my life (taking side gigs, acting, etc. to pay the bills, plus moving cross-country), but I also think that some of it was because I might not have been FULLY ready to hit “resume” on the search.  I’m just not always a big fan of the unknown…it’s scary to me.  There’s so much potential for getting hurt, for not being in control, and for failure.  It’s just been so important to me that I AM able to, in the end, figure out this puzzle and feel reconnected, however that might look, that the prospect of that hope being snuffed out (by possibly running through all of my search resources and coming up empty), or, maybe worse, finding the rest of my biological roots but being rejected by this additional family…has been enough for me to not push quite as hard as I could to figure all of this out.

But I also know, deep down, to my core, that I NEED to do this.  Even if some in my biological family reject me, that might not be true of ALL of them, and regardless, I’ll have peace of mind that I know the truth.  I’ll know my ancestors, and they cannot reject me.  I don’t see why they ever would even if they could.  At the end of the day, I am their kin every bit as much as any more “traditionally planned” progeny are.  I am different, as is my story, but my biological connection to them is the same.  They are in me and they are me.

I tore off the bandaid and responded to Gel, asking for her help.  She messaged me right away (even though she lives in Australia!) and was eager to jump right in.  By this point in the day, it was pretty late at night in Australia, so she told me that she would be going to bed soon, but that I should start by trying to make a “mirror tree”, then share it with her.  I had heard mirror trees before, in some of the conversations in these various support groups (primarily in “DNA Detectives”), but had been holding off on creating one of my own.  They sounded complicated and daunting.  Essentially, in order to make one (at least in AncestryDNA), you would more or less make your own copy of your closest (paternal, in this case) match’s family tree.  As you’re doing this, you want to a.) double-check the accuracy of that person’s work on their tree (because if it’s wrong, that might hold you back later on in the process) and b.) go as FAR back as possible in adding parents, grandparents, great-greatparents, etc. for each direct line.  The reason for this is that, ultimately, you will attach your DNA results electronically to different people (and, thus, ancestral lines) in the tree to see what other DNA/tree matches then pop up in your “hint” notifications that Ancestry sends, which will tell you who your most recent common ancestor was.  Doing the mirror tree also allows you to not have to rely upon other matches’ trees (and their relative fullness/thoroughness) to have access to the same information.  For a way better description of how mirror trees work, check this out.  Appropriately, the author is from New Orleans.  Ah, synchronicity.

Gel had been working on creating a resource guide for donor conceived people who are trying to find their biological families via DNA, so she sent me a copy of what she had so far to use as a guide.

I got to work for a few hours, and made the beginnings of my own mirror tree.  It felt kind of strange, but mostly empowering.  The process a long time to not even go all the far back in history, but that was because I was using painstaking care to be sure that anything I added was as accurate as possible.  I wasn’t willing to add another level of parents to any given branch of the tree if I didn’t have enough evidence to support the veracity of the connection…I figured that I’d consult other experts in the field (Gel included) if there were branches where I was getting stuck…where the branch seemed a bit too fragile.

Around 2 in the morning, I messaged Gel with my status so far, and gave her editing privileges on my tree for her review.  As she recommended, I set the tree to be private and unsearchable for now.

The next day, I awoke to about 50 over-night messages from Gel.  While I’d been sleeping, day broke in Australia and she had been busy!  She asked me a bunch of questions to aid in her research and sent me a ton of links to various family members she had found and added to different parts of the tree.

A search angel indeed!

Her last request was that I try connecting my DNA results to different “test” identities on her tree, so we could start cross referencing new DNA hints that AncestryDNA’s website would provide once it processed the combination of my results and wherever I pinned them on my tree.  Usually this takes about 12-48 hours to fully finish processing.

The next day, despite the fact that my tree hadn’t been built out all that much yet, I already had a few hints to review!

In addition to it recognizing the links with Nicole and Jessie in my tree, it came up with two other DNA matches of mine who also listed a certain shared common ancestor in their own AncestryDNA trees.

That common match was this man, Jedediah Hubbell:

My ancestor!  It was like figuring out a puzzle, solving a mystery, and revealing a prize all at once.  Revealing a root!

I looked within my mirror tree to see how exactly this man was related to the Reilly siblings (one of whom I suspect is my grandparent).

Jedediah (circled in yellow) traces back through Robert Edwin Reilly’s line (in blue); Robert Edwin Reilly has been my suspected great-grandfather.  Circled in green is one of the Reilly siblings.  While this doesn’t confirm exactly WHICH of the Reilly siblings is my grandparent, it DOES confirm that I AM a Reilly, and also a Clark, and every point in-between Jedediah Hubbell and Robert Edwin Reilly.

Warmer.  Real.  Here.

Oh, and literally the same day that I asked Gel for help, I received a facebook friend confirmation notification from one of the Reilly offspring I had tried to friend months before.

It was like the universe whispered softly to me “keep going”.