Have you ever wondered about the lives of your ancestors? Stayed awake at night thinking about the color of their daily lives, their moments of great triumph or great sorrow, their personal stories, their intimate connections to parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and, ultimately, you? Have you considered the possibility of finding long lost relatives, or even relatives not so far down your family tree?
For many, the search to discover their origins is a quest—a journey to discover ethnicity, cultural identity, and a place in the world. For many, this quest was largely impossible until the 2000s, when companies specializing in genetic discovery made testing easy, efficient, and affordable. These same companies made their results available with just a click of your computer mouse. Since the launch of the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the rise of companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe, two of the most popular genetic testing and ancestry discovery sites, millions of people have been able to find birth parents, unknown siblings, lost cousins, and direct links to their ancestral roots. Consequently, these companies have also provided insight into inherited medical conditions and propensity for genetically-inherited diseases.
Discovery of ancestral links is fraught with complexity. Will relatives acknowledge the connection? Will hidden secrets be revealed, despite the consequences? Will the aftermath of discovery lead to rich and rewarding relationships, or the opening of yet another chasm of loneliness?
We spoke with several What’s Up? Media readers who turned to DNA testing in their journey to discover parents, siblings, family history, and even their ethnicity. Their stories are deeply personal and emotional. They’ve braved an Odyssey-like search of discovery—not just of something so basic as their personal DNA sequence, but something more. They’ve faced finding the truth, and it isn’t always pretty. Here are their stories.
Valerie Reynolds of Baltimore
Valerie Reynolds first heard about DNA testing in 2016. “Everybody was talking about these genetic tests, and my children bought my husband a kit for Father’s Day,” she says. “Of course, I thought it sounded neat, so my daughter Cate [What’s Up? Media’s Entertainment Editor] purchased a kit for herself and gave one to me for Mother’s Day.”
Valerie was adopted as a baby and had always longed to know her birth parents. Much of her struggle lay in the void of not knowing where or why: Where did she get her looks? Why does she do things one way or another and, more importantly, did her history of depression and ADHD have a genetic link? Reynolds spent years searching for answers, engaging her husband in the effort. In fact, it was Reynolds’ husband who found her birth mother through vigorous online document searches. Together with Cate, they worked to extend identifying Reynolds’ family tree.
When Reynolds’ husband found her mother and they formed a close relationship, she was able to learn her father’s name and that he lived in California. It was relatively easy to find his address after that. “My father was in the service and shipping out on deployment. My mother was 20 years old and didn’t want to tell him she was pregnant. She didn’t know a lot about my father, so she gave the hospital staff information about a friend for the birth certificate. For years, until I found my mother, I had absolutely nothing to go on.”
After reaching out to her father, Reynolds enjoyed cordial conversations on the phone. He wasn’t willing to reveal his past or introduce her to his family and she didn’t want to push the topic. She was happy enough to finally have answers to questions she asked herself for years. “My birth mother folds laundry the exact way I do. My father drove my favorite car in the world, a 1964 Ford Mustang. When my birth mother looks at me, I can see myself in her, and her in me. I found out that I am mostly Norwegian. My son looks like a tall, strong Viking and now I know why.”
When her daughter Cate took a DNA test and began to find Valerie’s paternal first and second cousins online, Reynolds felt that she didn’t need to hide her existence from them. “Some people say that this sort of thing disrupts families, that it’s not fair. But I disagree. These tests are doing more good than harm. These tests can save adopted people years and years of not knowing. We can finally get what we need and learn what we need to know.”
Finding her birth parents hasn’t changed her relationship with her adoptive family. Reynolds feels that the discovery of new relatives just means she has more family to love. “My adoptive mother was always a little weird about me finding my birth mother, and I was never sure why she felt that way. Growing up, she taught me that love isn’t something you divide, you share it.” Reynolds continues to live her life in the way her mother taught her, and finding new family members doesn’t change how she does that. “I am going to a family reunion this summer with 120 members of my adoptive family and I am so excited to be with these people I truly consider family. I feel no difference between my love and need for my biological or my adoptive family.”
Steven Labov of Philadelphia
Steven Labov cared for his father, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, for several years before he died. When he asked his father’s physicians about the chromosomal likelihood that he might inherit the disease, they directed him to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, where he was able to take genetic testing for free. The results revealed that while he did have markers for Parkinson’s, his sister did not.
Labov decided to take a 23andMe test, largely because that company’s genetic research is specifically geared to revealing health and medical-related information. What Labov discovered was a brand-new family.
The 23andMe test results showed Labov a match that they believed to be a grandfather. “I thought the test was wrong, that it had to be a mistake, because I knew both of my grandfathers and that was just impossible. I sort of let it go for a long time after that, thinking the test was not conclusive,” he says. Two years passed and in late 2018 Labov received an email from 23andMe that showed an updated DNA match. It turned out that the match was not a grandfather, but a half-brother.
Labov learned more details through cousins. Their father went into the Navy at age 17, and got out when he was 21. At that time, he had a brief relationship with a girl from his neighborhood. When the parents from both sides discovered she was pregnant, they sent her away to live with a relative until the baby was born. After the birth, the girl gave the baby up for adoption.
Through the 23andMe website, the brothers began to exchange information and started talking on the phone. “I got my sister involved and we all just couldn’t believe it. My sister and I have a brother! My brother looks more like my father than I do! He’s been here to see us three or four times. I’ve been to Atlanta to visit him and he was able to meet our father in hospice. I think these tests and these discoveries are a good thing. A good chunk of people don’t want anyone to discover their past and they don’t want contact with a child they gave up. But I gained a brother and learned so much about my family, how they lived, and what they went through.”
Jennifer of Crownsville
Jennifer Berkebile jokes that her family’s ancestry looks more like a bush than a tree. Growing up, she knew that her mother’s first husband adopted her, but she didn’t have many details about her birth father. “My mother told me that she got pregnant by a Scottish drummer, that her parents kicked her out of the house, and that my birth father died. In fact, none of this turned out to be true.”
Berkebile’s mother was a true hippie in the 1960s, a wanderer who left home with a friend to travel west across Canada, headed for Vancouver. In the remote Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, while awaiting a shipment of an auto part to repair her car, Berkebile’s mother met a young man. They instantly connected.
The car part arrived after ten days, and the young lovers went their separate ways. They reconnected the following summer in Vancouver, where they moved in together and where Berkebile was born. After some months, they returned to the Okanagan, living in a bus until circumstances tore them apart when Berkebile was about two years old. “My mother married a mutual friend, an American draft dodger, and I never saw my father again,” Berkebile says. “We moved to the United States and she just didn’t talk about it. I often wondered about him, but those early years of my life were difficult for both of us. Her husband was not a good man, and I didn’t want to ask.”
When Berkebile’s mother later remarried a wonderful man, it didn’t seem right to pry into an area her mother clearly didn’t want to discuss. It was only casually, in a bar in Alaska, and when her mother was diagnosed with cancer, that she finally revealed a name.
While much of her mother’s version of Berkebile’s birth story brushes over the facts, she laughs about the few facts that were right. “He is English, not Scottish. He’s from near the English border with Scotland, so she at least got that almost right. He was a drummer. That’s true. He was playing the bongos in strip clubs.”
Berkebile found her father through genetic tests that connected her with an uncle in the United Kingdom. That uncle said the family was estranged from Berkebile’s father and didn’t know his whereabouts. They did know that she had a half-sister. “When I connected with my uncle, I said, ‘I [don’t] want to cause a shock, but I think I am related to you.’ When he replied, and I learned that I had four uncles and cousins and a sister, I went to work just shaking like a leaf.” Berkebile found her sister, Leila, on Instagram and reached out to her, but not without a little trepidation. “My sister replied that she knew all about me. I really needed a moment to process that. Once I did, we connected on Facebook and [talked] every day.”
After several emails, Leila put Berkebile in touch with her father who, lovingly and with good humor, told her the true story of her birth and beginnings. This past summer, Berkebile travelled with her husband and daughter to meet her paternal family. “I have an amazing sister, two beautiful nieces, a father, and uncles; an entire family I didn’t know. I don’t know what kind of relationship I will have with [my dad] or if he will ever come to Crownsville to visit, but he’s charming and quirky and funny, and I am so lucky to have this very cool family that I would never know if it weren’t for genetic testing.”
Carrie Baquie of Millersville
Carrie Baquie spent years helping her mother realize a lifelong dream to identify her family. What she discovered was a secret birth, a nunnery, and a quiet adoption.
“It was my mother Mary’s only dream to find her birth parents,” Baquie says. “Her dream became my dream, so I sent away for the 23andMe genetic test.” After nearly 16 months, Baquie found a second cousin, Megan. She began to correspond with Megan, but was briefly stymied when their communications faded. “She wanted proof of our connection to her, and I couldn’t prove how we were connected except through my mother’s father, who would be my grandfather. I had my mother take the 23andMe test, which proved through the DNA connection that my mother and Megan’s mother, Kathleen, are first cousins.”
Kathleen happened to mention the chromosome connection to her mother, Peggy. “In Peggy, we found someone who, at her age, was mentally agile and could remember all sorts of details about my grandmother, who dated Peggy’s brother Bill,” Baquie says. The story is not pretty.
Despite being a 23-year-old nurse living on her own in Connecticut, Mary’s mother was forced to move to New York City to have the baby. “My mother was reading Megan’s email about Peggy’s recollections with me, and she just burst into tears,” Baquie describes. “For her, it had been a lifetime of trying to get answers, to understand who her parents were and some of the reasoning behind how she was adopted. It was life-changing.”
Through Peggy, Mary found the name of her birth mother: Margaret Mary. Sadly, she had passed away before Baquie or Mary could find her. Margaret Mary grew up in a strict Catholic family. When her parents discovered she was pregnant from a longtime boyfriend, they sent her to live with an aunt who was a nun in a New York City convent. When the child was born, Margaret was forced to give her up for adoption.
Although Margaret married and had three other children, she struggled with addiction and depression. “No one understood what she was struggling with. It wasn’t until we did the genetic testing, met Megan and Kathleen, and learned about Margaret’s life that the pieces began to fall into place,” Baquie says.
In the time since discovering Margaret’s history, Baquie and Mary found Mary’s birth father, who had also passed away. He was married twice and has several children, none of whom have been willing to connect with Mary.
Recently, Baquie and Mary attended a paternal family reunion, which the siblings refused to attend. “It is a huge emotional challenge to have family who doesn’t want to connect with you. It’s personal. It is hurtful and it’s hard to understand. But at the same time, we would do it again, because we discovered these things my mother had been seeking since she was 18 years old,” Baquie says. “She definitely thinks the tests are pretty cool.”
Noreen Frenaye of Annapolis
In 2015, Noreen Frenaye’s mother passed away, opening an opportunity for a cousin to share a secret: Frenaye’s mother was previously married and had a child, a daughter. She also had a son, Frenaye’s half-brother. After research revealed a marriage license and birth certificate, Frenaye took both the Ancestry.com and the 23andMe genetic tests, entered her information into the companies’ online databases, and hoped she might find her long lost siblings.
The DNA tests revealed close family matches, but Frenaye couldn’t interpret the mathematics of the genetics. A cousin told her about social media groups on Facebook set up specifically to support people looking for relatives through DNA tests. Members of the Facebook group showed Frenaye how her genetic percentage match could be a half-sibling, double-first cousin, niece, or grandchild.
Through the process of elimination, Frenaye knew that the double-first cousin, niece, and grandchild couldn’t be true. A review of the X chromosome on the DNA results showed that she shared paternal genetics with a match. Frenaye reached out via email.
When Frenaye and her match began their online research to discover their shared ancestor, they didn’t recognize how they were connected. Eventually, Frenaye and her sister discovered that they shared a father, a fact the sisters never knew or suspected during their lives. “My sister knew this would kill her mother, because obviously, our father had an affair and I was a product of that,” Frenaye says.
In the time since the discovery of their sibling relationship, Frenaye has met her sister and two of four half-brothers. “I don’t see us having a typical sibling relationship,” Frenaye says. “It’s hard, the history, the memories of growing up that don’t include your new siblings. We are two people who have met in the course of our lives and are biologically connected but otherwise strangers.”
Despite the shock of discovery and sadness having missed out a on a childhood with her biological father and his family, Frenaye says she would take the test again. “I would absolutely do it again. After finding this out, I just wanted the truth of everything. I still look every day in hopes that I will find the maternal half-brother my mom put up for adoption. I will only find him if he takes a DNA test and makes his results public. Now that my mom is passed and I know these new facts about her and my family, I want to get to the truth.”
