My status as an adopted person came up in a conversation with friends during 2015.
Someone asked if I’d taken a DNA test. I hadn’t, but I was intrigued.
As an abandoned baby, I had no information about my ethnicity or biological history. Up to that point, there was really no way to find that information.
But consumer DNA testing was advancing quickly, and I wondered what I could learn from a DNA test.
Open adoptions started to become widely accepted in the 1980s and 1990s. Children in open adoptions have a lot of information about, and perhaps even a relationship with, their families of origin.
Prior to the rise of open adoption, adoptees had few details about their beginnings. The legal proceedings were usually private and the records sealed – but at least those records do exist (and laws are beginning to change to allow adoptees access) .
For abandoned babies, the information surrounding our entry into this world is generally limited to a police or social services report of where and when we were found. There is nothing else – we were not legally placed for adoption, so there is no non-identifying information to request, no original birth certificate to seek out. Finding birth family was almost impossible.
But DNA testing was changing that. Adopted people AND abandoned babies were finding out where they came from, uncovering secrets long buried and learning about their origins.
I wondered if it could happen for me, too.
After some research, I did it – I purchased a DNA test kit.
Actually – I purchased THREE kits from different companies. Why? Because I had discovered an amazing genetic genealogist named CeCe Moore.
Not just ‘discovered’ actually, but became acquainted with. Knowing that our cases are much harder to solve than the average search, CeCe volunteers time helping abandoned babies like myself solve their biological puzzles. I ended up in a small group of foundlings that CeCe was helping to learn genetic genealogy to assist in their search for origins.
And in those teachings was an important note for people who are searching with little to go on:
Fish in all three ponds.
The ‘ponds’ in question were the top three DNA testing companies at the time – Ancestry, 23andMe, and FamilyTreeDNA.
With highest number users among those completing DNA tests, these companies offered the best probability of an abandoned baby finding a biological match. Starting from zero, it made sense to cast a line into all three and see if I got a bite.
I provided the saliva samples, and I dropped the kits in the mail.
And I waited.
About 8 weeks later, results were in.
Within 12 hours of receiving my first set of results, I had reached out to a fairly close DNA match that showed up on my profile.
I looked at his public family tree. Then I analyzed where I might fit in based on how much DNA we shared. Excitedly, I made some guesses, and I did some online records searching.
And then… I discovered a photo that took my breath away. Because it was of a woman who looked like me.
This was something I had never experienced before.
By the end of the day, I had figured out who my biological mother was.
To say that this was unexpected would be a big understatement.
I thought I’d be lucky to have any matches at all, much less one close enough to allow me to burn through the mystery in a day.
And indeed, I got much more of what I expected when I later turned to figure out my paternal side. The matches were very few, and very distant. There was no clear path to follow, and it took several years of searching to make any progress on identifying my biological father.
Sometimes that’s the way genetic genealogy works. Big wins one day, then months or years of no progress on your research.
What can you learn from a DNA test?
I’ll fill in more blanks as time goes on – to write the entire search story in one post would effectively make it a novel 😀
But the point is –
I spat in a tube, and I changed my life.
Taking those DNA tests was the catalyst for learning my origins. In honesty, it has not been all sunshine and roses. This journey has had a share of ugly along with the good. There have been times when it seems that most of what I discovered was difficult, or disappointing, or tragic.
And that’s both the promise and the risk.
If you locate biological family, will you be welcomed – or will you be told to go away? Will you get answers – or will there be doors closed in your face?
We don’t know.
