For decades, Jonathan Hay, a well-known hip-hop producer and Santa Monica-based PR maven, felt paralyzed by the mystery of his birth.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22539" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/jonathan-hay1-300x266.jpg" alt="jonathan-hay1" width="300" height="266" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/jonathan-hay1-300x266.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/jonathan-hay1.jpg 610w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
That all changed late last year after connecting for the first time with his biological parents, in part because of testing with 23andMe.
His story was recently featured in The Ledger in Central Florida, where his biological father, Ron Bradley, and half-brother, Ryan Bradley, live. His biological mother, Pamela Nicely, lives in Ohio.
Although he spoke on the phone with Pamela and Ron, Jonathan had difficulty meeting them in person.&#8221;They wanted to see me on Thanksgiving, and then they wanted to see me on Christmas, and I found myself making excuses,&#8221; Jonathan told The Ledger. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-22541" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Haymaker.jpg" alt="Haymaker" width="250" height="138" />
He and his parents will meet in person for the first time sometime later this year, but it will be on camera as part of a reality series Hay is putting together called <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/thehaymaker/jonathanhay/prweb12604331.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">“The Haymaker.”</a>
Stay tuned for more about his reality show.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

How I Met My Father

If it’s true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, then Jimmy Cygler and Paul Leventhal are plenty tough.
&nbsp;
<div id="attachment_22516" style="width: 278px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22516" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Paul1-268x300.jpg" alt="Jimmy, left, and his brother Paul." class="size-medium wp-image-22516" height="300" width="268" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Paul1-268x300.jpg 268w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Paul1.jpg 449w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 268px) 100vw, 268px" />Jimmy, left, and his brother Paul.</div>
When both were infants, they were taken from their mother, Rebecca Kaufman, and raised worlds apart without knowing of the others’ existence.
With the help of 23andMe, the brothers recently found each other and were able to meet in person in early 2015.
Jimmy traveled from his home in Sao Paulo, Brazil to spend a week with Paul in Florida.
There the two men got to talk about their lives. Paul shared with Jimmy the little he knew about their mother, a brilliant but troubled woman. Jimmy was able to share with Paul a little about his improbable life.


“Stories of this kind, they are hard to believe,” Jimmy says. “Do you know the book ‘Life of Pi?’ A fantastical story, but it is nothing compared to my life.”

Paul downplays the drama in his own life – the separation from his mother, spending his first five years in a foster home, and growing up in a house where his father and stepmother were distant.
Paul has one fleeting memory of sitting on his mother’s knee – almost everything else he knows about her comes from what he’s gleaned from relatives. It wasn’t until Paul turned 18, after his father’s death, that he learned he’d been the product of an affair.
At first Paul pushed this information out of his head, but a few years later as a young man, a relative confirmed it was true.
“My life was turned upside down,” Paul said.


He had to live with not only his mother abandoning him but her family cutting ties with him as well. Jimmy thinks that Paul having to endure their mother’s abandonment and rejection may have been harder than the physical abuse he suffered.
Paul’s not so sure, but he knows that it affected him.


“I was angered by the fact that her brothers – two doctors and two lawyers – didn&#8217;t step up to the plate and save me from going to a foster home,” Paul said. “I must have been quite an embarrassment to them and my maternal grandmother, who was still living at the time.”


Rejected by his mother and her family, Paul spent years trying to find his biological father. That’s part of why he eventually got his DNA results with 23andMe. While he hasn’t yet found the identity of his biological father, Paul did find his brother Jimmy.
“My father had no idea who his mother was and finding his brother finally helped us solve that puzzle,” Jimmy’s daughter, Orly, said. “Now we know who she was.”


Her father agrees that it has helped.
“You know Nietzsche, ’that which does not kill us makes us stronger?’” Jimmy asks from his office in Sao Paulo. “Well, it is true for me.”


Paul disagrees with his brother on this point. What doesn’t kill you might make you stronger or it may damage you for the rest of your life.


Jimmy survived years of abuse as a child, life at a kibbutz, four wars, and three marriages. But he doesn’t feel damaged.


“I’m a rebuilt human being,” Jimmy says. “Really all the conditions of my life were anything but normal or positive, but the art of my life was to become a good human being.”


But it wasn’t easy.
When Jimmy first went to Israel at the age of 13, he began getting psychological help to work through his childhood trauma.
<div id="attachment_22476" style="width: 265px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22476" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz-255x300.jpg" alt="Jimmy as a young man on a kibbutz in Israel." class="size-medium wp-image-22476" height="300" width="255" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz-255x300.jpg 255w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz-768x905.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz-869x1024.jpg 869w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz-747x880.jpg 747w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz-1001x1180.jpg 1001w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-at-Kibbutz.jpg 1640w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 255px) 100vw, 255px" />Jimmy as a young man on a kibbutz in Israel.</div>
“When I came to Israel I was a pile of wreckage, and I had to do something to these broken pieces to reassemble a human being,” Jimmy said.
But not having all the pieces about his life made that “reassembling” a life-long process.
“The story with Paul is part of it, but just one part of it,” said Jimmy. “I’m one of nine brothers and sisters. I’m the only brother (related to) all of them and I spent my whole life searching for those missing pieces.”
Jimmy mentions connecting this process with what psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote about in his book Man’s Search for Meaning.
“He says a person who has meaning can bear almost anything,” Jimmy said. “So this search for meaning became important to me.”
Part of that search has included trying to learn more about who he was, where he came from and to whom he is connected.
“First I had to gather all the pieces and then you start putting the puzzle together and you try to find meaning in the picture that emerges,” Jimmy said. “You might have the whole picture or, like me, just parts of it.”
Jimmy said he also learned that one small piece of information could change everything. Recently a relative in London found a travel document Jimmy’s father had used when Jimmy was a baby. On it was the name James Maurice Goldberg.
“That’s my name (from his birth certificate, before his father changed his last name), but I’d never known it before,” he said.
The name also helped him find out more about his father, Izrael Aron Goldberg. Jimmy’s father fled Poland before the start of World War II and settled in Peru. There he married a woman and had two children, a son Lucho and a daughter Alina, and converted to Christianity. He would later say that all the family he had in Poland died in the Holocaust. After experiencing financial troubles, Izrael left his family in Peru and moved to New York City.
“I do have a business card of his from his time in New York,” Jimmy said. “It says ‘I. Aron Goldberg, specialist in furs.’”
<div id="attachment_22477" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22477" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116-300x123.jpg" alt="Jimmy's father's business card when he lived in New York." class="size-medium wp-image-22477" height="123" width="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116-300x123.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116-768x314.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116-1024x419.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116-880x360.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116-1180x483.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fotos-de-Fotos-116.jpg 1581w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Jimmy&#8217;s father&#8217;s business card when he lived in New York.</div>
It was in New York that he met Rebecca Kaufman, who already had two sons, Paul and Jay, who were several years older than Jimmy.
Paul ended up in foster care and Jay was taken by Rebecca’s first husband. Rebecca was unable to care for Jimmy when he was born in 1949, and she was subsequently placed in an institution. Izrael, alone with his infant son, asked his estranged wife in Peru to come to New York with their two children.
“The interesting part of the story is that he didn’t tell her that he had a baby, me,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy’s half-sister, Alina, was almost 10 years old at the time. His half-brother, Lucho, was about eight. His sister remembers holding Jimmy as an infant, and falling in love with him. But it would be the last she’d see him for almost 55 years because the family quickly fell apart.
<div id="attachment_22478" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22478" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Israel-Alina-e-Jimmy-1951-300x282.jpg" alt="Jimmy with his father and his half sister Alina before he was taken to Brazil." class="size-medium wp-image-22478" height="282" width="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Israel-Alina-e-Jimmy-1951-300x282.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Israel-Alina-e-Jimmy-1951.jpg 408w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Jimmy with his father and his half sister Alina before he was taken to Brazil.</div>
Jimmy doesn’t know all the details but is aware that his father fought with his wife. She stayed just a few months before returning to Peru with her two children, leaving Jimmy and his father in New York. Izrael took Jimmy to Brazil shortly thereafter. Jimmy thinks his father suffered from survivor’s guilt and wanted to somehow reconstruct the family he lost in the Holocaust, which might explain why Izrael had three children from two different mothers. Jimmy’s father took the name Israel Cygler when they moved to Brazil. He also quickly remarried and that’s when Jimmy’s life turned into a nightmare.
“I thought I had a ‘normal life,’” Jimmy said about what things were like after his father remarried. “I had a father, a woman whom I thought was my mother, and four younger brothers. I was raised Christian, studied with the nuns at school and went to mass on Sunday. Had a first communion. That was my life. But what I thought was normal at the time was not normal at all. “I was maltreated and tortured as a kid.”
His stepmother once punished him by putting him in a hole under the house for a week without food. Another time she smeared hot pepper juice “on all the holes of my body.” And after getting caught playing with matches as a seven-year-old, his mother placed his hand into a gas fire to punish him. He was burnt so badly that it took years of surgeries and skin grafts before he could properly open and close his hand.
“My mother did that to me,” Jimmy said. “She was the real villain in this, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know she wasn’t my mother, if I had known I could have dealt with that. But the only conclusion I could draw from those punishments was that I was a monster, that I deserved that because I was a monster. That was me at 13.”
Then the trajectory of his life changed when his father became critically ill and a stranger shared with him some surprising news.
“Out of the blue this young lad appears, speaks with me for half an hour and tore down the basis of my life,” Jimmy said. “He tells me ‘I’m your brother from another marriage. I’m from Lima, Peru. You also have an older sister, and your mother is not your mother. You were born to a woman in New York.’”
Jimmy was stunned. His father then told him it was all true.
“’Well son, now that you know you are a Jew, you are going to the land of the Jews, which is called Israel,’” Jimmy recalled his father saying. “I didn’t know anything about that country or those people. I didn’t know anything about the Jewish people. ”
He arrived in Israel in October 1962, and stayed for the next 27 years. “The country embraced me,” Jimmy said.
He lived in a special area of a kibbutz for teenagers who didn’t have parents. They were from 30 to 40 different countries and many had been orphaned or displaced by World War II. Jimmy received good care, including intensive psychological treatment to help deal with the emotional wounds from his stepmother’s abuse.
“That’s why I say I’m a rebuilt human being,” Jimmy said.
He served as a soldier in four wars, was married, has two sons and a daughter, divorced, married again, and had another daughter, and then divorced again.
“And then I met a Brazilian girl and fell in love and went to Brazil,” he said.
Jimmy reinvented himself &#8211; the twice divorced veteran who was a father of four went to college, married again, started another family, and now he runs a very successful business. But he was always looking, “desperately looking,” he says, for the pieces to the puzzle of his life. He was able to find his four half-brothers from his father’s family in Brazil. His stepmother told them he died in the war. With the help of a Peruvian businessman, Jimmy tracked down the phone number of a woman in Lima he thought might be his sister, Alina. He called her, said his name was Jimmy and that he was from Brazil.
“My dear little brother Jimmy, I have been looking for you all my life!” she replied. Jimmy pauses to control his emotion as he recounts meeting his sister.
“From this moment I felt love for her,” he said.
Jimmy traveled to Peru to get to know his sister, and she shared a blurry old photo she had of him being held by his biological mother. She also told him her own memory of holding him as an infant. She never forgot that and spent her life looking for him, never knowing how she could find him.
<div id="attachment_22479" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22479" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Goldberg-e-Rebeca-Becky-Brooklin-1949-225x300.jpg" alt="A blurry photo of Jimmy being held by his mother Rebecca. The only photo he has of his mother." class="size-medium wp-image-22479" height="300" width="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Goldberg-e-Rebeca-Becky-Brooklin-1949-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Goldberg-e-Rebeca-Becky-Brooklin-1949-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Goldberg-e-Rebeca-Becky-Brooklin-1949-660x880.jpg 660w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Goldberg-e-Rebeca-Becky-Brooklin-1949-886x1180.jpg 886w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Jimmy-Goldberg-e-Rebeca-Becky-Brooklin-1949.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />A blurry photo of Jimmy being held by his mother Rebecca. The only photo he has of his mother.</div>
“She kept that memory her whole life, always wondering what had happened to me,” Jimmy said.
She also told him about their father, his financial problems in Peru, some of his history fleeing Poland and losing all of his family in the Holocaust. And he learned about being born in New York, but he still didn’t know anything about his biological mother. Jimmy says he and Alina became very close.
In 2013, his sister was diagnosed with cancer, a year later she died.
“Alina was a wonderful woman,” he said.
Losing her so soon was a huge blow to Jimmy. Jimmy’s story took another turn in early 2015 when his daughter, Orly, got her 23andMe results. She saw a match with Paul, thinking he was a cousin. But when she shared with Jimmy Paul’s date of birth and how much DNA he shared with Paul, they concluded that Paul and Jimmy were brothers.
In that first meeting, both men were overcome as they hugged and shed tears.
“It was very emotional,” Jimmy said. “We’re kind of old guys and I could see in his eyes how much he had suffered. I know what I went through and I came out a real strong person – a leader, a teacher and a family man. We both survived.”

A Fantastical Story

By Kasia Bryc
Earlier this month, I attended the South by Southwest conference in Austin to speak on a panel with the writer AJ Jacobs about how interconnected we are.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22355" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Kasia-@-SXSW-300x229.jpg" alt="Kasia @ SXSW" width="300" height="229" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Kasia-@-SXSW-300x229.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Kasia-@-SXSW.jpg 574w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
But walking around the conference with such a diverse mix of people – many with their rock star cool outfits and denim jackets – you’d be forgiven if you questioned whether they could come from the same gene pool as me, a former nerdy high school kid.
And yet, we really are all one big family. In June, AJ will host the <a href="http://globalfamilyreunion.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Global Family Reunion</a> in New York City, what he’s described as the world’s largest family reunion.
AJ spoke about the many cousins he found in his research year. He was very proud of his family connection to Gwyneth Paltrow, and would welcome her to join his family for a kosher Thanksgiving. He also noted that he was related to Judge Judy, which caused him to revise his opinion of her – as a person – in a more favorable light.
Also on the panel was Joanna Mountain, 23andMe’s Senior Director of Research. Joanna spoke about the incredible stories and discoveries that people have made by connecting to their DNA cousins, which are regularly highlighted in this blog.
But I was most excited to show how many cousins we all have. The typical 23andMe customer has over two thousand DNA cousins, and that’s just within the 23andMe database.
It all comes down to the math: the further back—in generations—you go, the more genealogical ancestors you have. Two parents, four grandparents&#8230; all the way up to 128 fifth-great grandparents. And that only takes you back about two hundred years. Imagine if you were looking for your ancestors from the sixteenth century—you’d have 131,072 genealogical ancestors to hunt down!
So, as unique as you are, all these ancestors passed on their DNA to create you and your many cousins. And, as you can imagine, 130 thousand people have a lot of descendants, so it’s unsurprising that the average 23andMe customer can find so many cousins.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22354" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Connections-300x169.jpg" alt="Connections" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Connections-300x169.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Connections.jpg 720w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
It quickly follows that, with each of us having so many DNA relatives, any pair of individuals are connected through their cousins. To illustrate this point, I showed that each of Tuesday’s panelists, together with Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (host of “Finding Your Roots&#8221; on PBS who kindly agreed to participate in my experiment), are all just one or two “cousins&#8221; connections apart.
In fact, almost everyone in the database is connected through one, two, or three DNA cousins. Which should make you rethink how you treat anyone you meet on the street. Regardless of what they may look like, you never know who you might be related to!

Kasia Bryc

Everyone Is Related. The (Big) Data Proves It

Earlier this month, we wrote about <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-customer-stories/jesss-story/">Jess</a>, who with the help of her 23andMe results discovered that 100 years ago her grandfather had been accidentally switched at birth with another baby boy and raised by<div id="attachment_22174" style="width: 236px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22174" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-226x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-22174 size-medium" width="226" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-226x300.jpeg 226w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-662x880.jpeg 662w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam.jpeg 665w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" />Jess&#8217;s grandfather Phil and her great grandfather Sam.</div>Jewish immigrant parents while the baby he was switched with by an Irish Catholic family.

The reason Jess was able to figure this out is because for three years, another woman, Alice Plebuch, was working to unravel her own family mystery. It was Alice who ultimately reached out to Jess asking in an email if she’d learned something unexpected about her ancestry. 


Now we get to hear Alice’s side of this amazing story that has been posted on <a href="http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2015/02/switched-at-birth-unravelling-century_27.html">CeCe Moore’s blog</a>.
Alice was raised to believe that she was almost all Irish on both her mother and father’s side, but after testing with several different DNA testing services she learned that she was actually half Jewish. Her quest to figure out why took years of work, and required testing of several different family members as well as document searches and even creating a database to track all of her the relatives she discovered through testing. It’s instructive to see how careful Alice was with information, knowing that it could be difficult for some family members to digest and wanting to make sure she had all the facts first. Alice’s story
<div id="attachment_22272" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22272" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father-200x300.jpg" alt="Alice's father, who turned out to be Sam's biological son." class="size-medium wp-image-22272" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father-200x300.jpg 200w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father-587x880.jpg 587w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father-787x1180.jpg 787w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Alices-father.jpg 816w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Alice&#8217;s father, who turned out to be Sam&#8217;s biological son.</div>
is also informative about how a smart and resourceful person can use genetic testing and other records to uncover hidden family history.
What is also stunning, at least for us here at 23andMe, is that none of this would have – or even could have – come to light without genetic testing.


If Alice and Jess hadn’t tested there really wouldn’t have been any other way to uncover this hidden history. Even for CeCe – a genetic genealogists with <a href="http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/p/about-me.html">years of experience</a> unraveling countless family stories – that Alice and Jess were able to figure this out was hard to believe.

The Other Side of the Story

Jessica has a black and white photo of her grandfather, Phil, standing next to her great grandfather, Sam.
In the photo, both father and son are staring into the camera and smiling. Now after uncovering something hidden about her ancestry, the photo takes on a new meaning.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22174" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-226x300.jpeg" alt="Phil and Sam" width="226" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-226x300.jpeg 226w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-662x880.jpeg 662w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam.jpeg 665w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" />
Phil, in a white t-shirt with his hair slicked back, towers over his dad and has a pretty distinctive chin dimple and big ears. His dad, Sam, with a gap-toothed grin and his sparse hair sticking up all over, has a very different set to his chin than his son.
The photo is an old one, something Jessica had looked at many times before. But after getting a message from another 23andMe user, Jessica realized something that was staring right at her. The two men – her grandfather and his father – couldn’t look more different.

<h6>Hidden Ancestry</h6>
Jessica’s fascinating post<a href="https://strangepilgrimage.wordpress.com/"> “And Who Would’ve Thought…,”</a> drew us in like few others. We won’t ruin the story for you. You need to read it yourself.
But in a brief exchange about her post, Jessica, who writes the<a href="https://strangepilgrimage.wordpress.com/"> “Strange Kind of Pilgrim”</a> blog, said she learned something that might have remained hidden if she hadn’t tested with 23andMe.
“I&#8217;m really thankful that this all came to light while there was still a chance of finding out what really happened,” she said. “I feel like, very slowly, I&#8217;m gaining some roots, and I&#8217;m grateful that I will have these stories and this information to pass down to my children so they can know where they came from.”
<h6>What Does it Mean?</h6>
Reading her story conjures up all sorts of questions about our upbringing, our ancestry and our identity. Your biology and your upbringing make up who you are, but which is more important? How much of what we are is dependent on our biology and how much on our ancestry?<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22176" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo-300x267.jpeg" alt="Jess photo" width="300" height="267" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo-300x267.jpeg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo-768x683.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo-1024x911.jpeg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo-880x783.jpeg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo-1180x1050.jpeg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jess-photo.jpeg 1861w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“The way you&#8217;re raised and the family who raises you can influence who you are in a big way, but I think the biology is always there,” said Jessica.
Jessica graciously let us post an excerpt of her story below, but you really should read the whole piece on<a href="https://strangepilgrimage.wordpress.com/"> her blog here</a>. Let us know what you think.
<h6>“And Who Would’ve Thought…It Figures”</h6>
 “In October I decided, rather on a whim, to order a genetics test from 23andMe.  It’s a company that compares your DNA to populations all over the world and lets you know where your ancestors likely hailed from.  I didn’t do this because I doubted my parentage at all (did you hear that, Mom?  I believe you.  Maybe other people who see us together assume I’m adopted, but I do not.  ), but I wanted to see my father’s side of the family tree more clearly.
“My dad passed away when I was very young.  His mother passed when he was very young, and his father died almost exactly two years after Dad did.  So while I had a vague idea of the Benson family heritage as communicated to me by my mother and aunt, I still felt a bit rootless.  I knew we were Russian and Polish Jews, but that’s it (and to be honest, I wasn’t even sure how Polish we were.  I came across a family tree partly filled out in my baby book, and it traces my paternal grandfather’s heritage to Russia and my paternal grandmother’s heritage to Turkey, but it went no farther back than that.)
….
“Fast forward to December: The results came in, and they were…surprising.  I was on the phone with my mom at the time, and I think the first words out of my mouth were, “I’m Irish?!” … I wasn’t supposed to be Irish (or British).  Or Western European at all.  I was supposed to be a Russian, Polish Jew.  I was flummoxed.  My mom was flummoxed.  My aunt was flummoxed.  I really like the word “flummoxed.”  So descriptive.
…
“Frustratingly, my search for answers had only turned up another mystery.  Even more infuriating, I couldn’t see a way of solving it.  The pertinent players were all long dead.  I could only figure that someone had fooled around on somebody in my family’s recent history and gotten away with a doozy of a lie.  
…
“One of the features of 23andMe is that they match you up with possible DNA relatives.  I have a whole list of 3rd to 4th and beyond possible cousins who share small segments of my DNA.  But my closest relative in the system was a predicted second cousin, who I only knew as P.  I didn’t contact P because I have nearly crippling social anxiety, and it’s a bit of an awkward conversation to initiate (Hi, I think we might be related.  Do you have any idea how?)  I hate awkward conversations like I hate the Patriots.  The antipathy runs true.
“This is all kind of important because a few days ago (has it really only been a few days?  What a short, strange trip it’s been) I received an email, not from P himself but from his cousin, A.  I’m so grateful that A was brave enough to ask those awkward first questions.  She asked if I had any known connections to the [Name removed]   family, and I answered that I didn’t.  I had never heard of the [family].  And then, interestingly, she asked me if I had expected my genetics results to report a sizable Ashkenazi component.  I had expected it, I told her, but it turns out, I’m not very much Ashkenazi.  Instead, I am unexpectedly Irish.  It’s all very mysterious, I confided.  And that’s when everything started to get a little weird.” 
 (READ THE REST OF THE STORY <a href="https://strangepilgrimage.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/and-who-wouldve-thought-it-figures/">HERE</a>)

Jess’s Story

In the fading black-and-white photo Diane Silberman Berger is about four years old and walking next to her mother along a sidewalk in downtown Spokane.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22106" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane-300x216.jpg" alt="Diane" width="300" height="216" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane-300x216.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane-768x554.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane-1024x739.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane-880x635.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane-1180x851.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diane.jpg 1930w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />


Taken by a street photographer in the late 1930s, the picture shows Diane holding tightly to her mother’s hand as they talk. It’s one of the few reminders Diane has of her mom.


“My mother died when I was nine years old,” she says holding the edge of the snapshot.


A profound loss, but it was made that much worse because Diane also lost complete contact with her mother’s family – all the aunts, uncles and cousins who made up some of the happy memories of her early childhood.
Despite decades of trying, Diane was never was able to find her mother’s family and reconnect.
Eventually, Diane gave up looking, thinking that perhaps that connection was lost forever.
Then one day her daughter looked at her 23andMe results, and that 70 years of longing to find her family ended.


“It’s just a miracle, it’s an absolute miracle,” said Diane. “I cry tears of happiness all the time now.”
<div id="attachment_22104" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22104" class="size-medium wp-image-22104" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barrie-and-Diane-300x200.jpg" alt="Diane and her daughter Barrie." width="300" height="200" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barrie-and-Diane-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barrie-and-Diane-768x513.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barrie-and-Diane-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barrie-and-Diane-880x588.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barrie-and-Diane-1180x789.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Diane and her daughter Barrie.</div>
<h6>The Separation</h6>
Diane’s story starts back in the middle of the Depression, when her mother and father were forced to move the family from their home in Connecticut to Washington State for a job. Diane’s mother had a big family, and Diane remembers visits with her aunts, uncles and cousins.  Her mother was close to her siblings, but when her mother died suddenly in 1941 Diane lost contact.
The reasons were in part because of geography, but also because of the war and because Diane’s father remarried. Diane loved her stepmother and she had a stepbrother with whom she was close, but she said she always felt that something was missing.
“People who have family don’t know what this is like,” Diane said, “(but) I sort of felt like an outsider sometimes.”
<h6>Starting the Search</h6>
As an adult Diane started searching for her mother’s family on her own with the information that she had. It wasn’t much, a name of one of her uncles, Sam Kaplan.
“Over the years we hired detectives and genealogists to try to track the family down but my mom had so little information, we eventually gave up,” said Diane’s daughter, Barrie.
And that would have been it if Barrie hadn’t tested with 23andMe. An early adopter, Barrie had tested out of curiosity. It had been awhile since she’d looked at her results when in 2014 she logged in, and noticed she’d gotten messages from someone inquiring about a close relative match. Sending messages back and forth, Barrie and her close match – Bram Boroson –tried to figure out how they were related.
<div id="attachment_22102" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22102" class="size-medium wp-image-22102" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram-300x229.jpg" alt="Bram Boroson" width="300" height="229" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram-300x229.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram-768x585.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram-1024x780.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram-880x670.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram-1180x899.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bram.jpg 1680w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Bram Boroson</div>
<h6>Finding Bram</h6>
Bram, who is a physics professor, said he signed up mostly because he was simply interested in getting a DNA test from a scientific point of view.
“Only later did I find out about this whole social aspect of it,” he said. “That you could be connected with people who are related to you. ”
It fascinated him. And seeing the connection with Barrie, who is a first cousin once removed, made him want to know more.
“I just saw that there was someone out there who was sharing, you know, more chunks of DNA than anyone else,” said Bram.
<h6>Making Connections</h6>
So he reached out. He and Barrie began exchanging bits of information trying to learn more about their family connection. They told each other a little bit about their family histories, where family members had lived over the generations. It’s when they shared some of their family names and Bram mentioned the name Kaplan that Barrie’s heart skipped a beat. She called her mom.
“What was your mother Martha’s last name?” Barrie asked. “Kaplan.”
Barrie didn’t want to jump the gun. She wanted to be sure. She got some more information from Bram and learned from Bram that his mother’s maiden name was the same as her grandmother’s maiden name.  Then she talked to Bram’s mother, Rebecca who remembered her father talking about Barrie’s grandmother, Diane’s mom. That’s when she knew, said Barrie. She called her mom.
“Are you sitting down?” she asked. “I found them.”
<h6>Elation</h6>
Diane was overwhelmed.
“Are you sure?” she asked.

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				<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="150" height="150" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Family-Tree1-150x150.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" aria-describedby="gallery-1-22113" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Family-Tree1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Family-Tree1-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Family-Tree1-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Family-Tree1-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Family-Tree1-980x980.jpg 980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
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				Filling in the family tree.
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				Diane, second from right, with her cousins from right Marilyn, Rebecca and Miriam on her right.
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				<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="150" height="150" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-looking-at-old-photo-150x150.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" aria-describedby="gallery-1-22115" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-looking-at-old-photo-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-looking-at-old-photo-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-looking-at-old-photo-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-looking-at-old-photo-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-looking-at-old-photo-980x980.jpg 980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
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				Cousins, Rebecca, Diane and Miriam at the Kaplan reunion in New York City.
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				<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="150" height="150" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-150x150.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" aria-describedby="gallery-1-22117" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cousins-980x980.jpg 980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
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				Rebecca, Diane and Miriam.
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				<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="150" height="150" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Old-photos-150x150.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" aria-describedby="gallery-1-22109" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Old-photos-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Old-photos-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Old-photos-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Old-photos-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Old-photos-980x980.jpg 980w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
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				Kaplan family photos.
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Barrie was sure, and she walked her mother through the connections. She told her mom what Rebecca, Diane’s first cousin and Bram’s mother, had said. Rebecca had said that her dad described Diane’s mother as his “favorite sister.” And Diane and Barrie learned that during all those years, it wasn’t just Diane who was looking for her mother’s lost family; they were looking for her too. Rebecca’s sister Miriam tears up when she talks about it.
“My sister and I grew up knowing that we had people in Seattle, or in Washington State,” Miriam said. “We only knew that my father told us that his sister Martha had a child before she died.”
<h6>Comfort in Knowing</h6>
But they didn’t know how to find Diane. Hearing all this helped Diane. Diane also learned more about her mother’s family and she got to see photos of her mother and her mother’s siblings. She was so young when her mother died that she actually didn’t know for sure how many aunts and uncles she had. It turns out her mother had six brothers and sisters. And they each had children of their own, who are now spread across the country. The oldest first cousin is 87, just a few years older than Diane – the youngest, a 22 month-old second cousin. Barrie said she’d always thought she had a small family.
“But I guess I was wrong,” she said. The “Kaplan Kin” set up a Facebook page to connect all the branches of the family and then in November of 2014, just before Thanksgiving, they gathered in New York City. They invited Diane and Barrie to come.
“It’s not really a reunion for us, but a union because we were meeting for the first time,” said Barrie. Diane and Barrie met Bram, his mother Rebecca and Miriam, Rebecca’s sister.
The Kaplans welcomed Diane, Barrie and extended Seattle relatives into the family.
“That desire for a connection was there but without the DNA it wouldn’t have happened,” said Bram.
At the cafe in New York where they met, the family members sat and talked about their parents and grandparents who had long ago passed away. They tried to fill in the some of the gaps in the family history, mapped out the family tree and took snapshots of their own. For Diane who had yearned for so long to reconnect with her family, it was a miracle of science.
“We have this family now, this big welcoming family,” she said.

I Found Them

Liz Kellner loves puzzles, but piecing together the hardest one of her life required a little help from 23andMe.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-10-15-09.17.15-169x300.jpg" alt="2014-10-15 09.17.15" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-21930" width="169" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-10-15-09.17.15-169x300.jpg 169w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-10-15-09.17.15-577x1024.jpg 577w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-10-15-09.17.15-496x880.jpg 496w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-10-15-09.17.15.jpg 640w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 169px) 100vw, 169px" />
“This was the first time I was one of the pieces,” said the 48 year-old entrepreneurship specialist.
Abandoned as an infant, Liz said her origins were always a mystery to her.
She’d been found on a cold December day in Minneapolis almost 50 years ago. She was only a few days old when a rookie cop discovered her in an apartment laundry room wrapped in a kimono.
Looking back now, Liz doesn’t see her story as a tragedy – quite the opposite.
“I was lucky enough to have a birth mother who, when she realized that she couldn&#8217;t take care of me, left me somewhere safe, and warm, given that it was in December and in Minnesota.”
Then there was the young cop who found her, the nurses who cared for her at the hospital, the foster mother who took her in, and the loving parents who ultimately adopted her.
Liz says she was fortunate. If she hadn’t been abandoned she never would have had the wonderful parents who raised her, or the younger sister who was born nine years after her adoption. Her family, she said, is the “best gift ever.” 

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				<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="150" height="150" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/adoption-day-150x150.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" aria-describedby="gallery-2-21926" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/adoption-day-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/adoption-day-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/adoption-day-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/adoption-day-574x574.jpg 574w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
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Liz wouldn’t want to change any of that even if she could. But that never altered her desire to know more about herself. It never changed wanting to know about where she came from or why she’d been abandoned as a baby.
Over the years, Liz searched for answers. She always knew she’d been adopted. As she was able to piece together the story of how she was found, she also did her best to find and thank those who’d been so good to her.
“Sort of paying it forward, you know,” she said.
Liz found and thanked Officer Jannsen, one of the police officers who found her. She also tracked down the foster mom who cared for her until her adoption and thanked her for taking such good care of her and being a part of the system.
They all remembered Liz.
“I guess I made an impression,” she said.
But the trail ended there, until, that is, she tested with 23andMe.
Initially the most important part of her results had to do with her ancestry. Liz quickly found out that despite being raised a Catholic, her heritage was 100 percent Ashkenazi Jew. Surprising for Liz, but the real surprised didn’t come until the summer of 2014 when Liz signed into her 23andMe account after not looking at it for awhile. She immediately saw something she’d never seen before.
“”I log in and …(the) screen says I have a cousin, and an aunt, and a half-sister.”
Stunned and thinking it was a mistake, she quickly logged out. She waited and then logged back in.
“Yup, still there,” Liz said.
It was the first time she’d ever been able to identify close biological relatives, in this case using 23andMe’s DNA Relatives tool.
This alone was huge, and Liz didn’t dare hope that she’d be able to answer the questions that have been there her whole life about who her mother or father was.
But she was also skeptical. Her first thought was that it was a mistake, so she emailed her sister, and her best friend, who is a bit of a genetics buff. Then she sent a message with her data to a friend who is a genetics professor. She wanted to know what they thought. Was it correct? Did she really just find her first close blood relatives?
Her sister’s response was immediate: “Oh My God!”
Then the professor weighed in.
“Congratulations, you have more family.”
Liz felt her head spinning.
Then things got really interesting.
Liz connected with her newly identified aunt, Abbieann. Abbieann had also been adopted. As they talked they realized that rather than Abbie being her aunt, they were actually half-sisters and they shared one other sister, who was also adopted. Because Liz’s two new-found biological sisters had been adopted in a more traditional way, they had birth certificates with names on them.
The two had used that to find their biological mother, who is also Liz’s mother and who was still alive. Liz’s full sister had also tested. So in a short time Liz went from having one sister to eight siblings, and identifying her birth parents, who were both still alive.
“So unreal,” she said. “There’s no way to describe my emotions. I think my heart stopped.”
While this was way more than Liz had ever hoped to learn, the new connections brought up difficult questions and histories. Her birth mother is still alive but has dementia. Liz’s siblings who share her father worried about the impact meeting Liz would have on their mom. Cautiously Liz moved forward and introduced herself to her new found cousins, aunts, uncles and siblings, most who seemed to welcome her into the family, even though “they didn&#8217;t even know I existed,” she said.
Liz also met her father, who had also been unaware of her birth. When they finally met, Liz saw in him some of her own quirks and habits.
Sitting across from him, she had the same strange sensation she had when she sat with her sisters. Here she was looking at someone who shared features and mannerisms with her, someone who looked totally familiar, but who was also a stranger.
“To sit and talk with someone who is your sibling, or your biological parent, at age 48, who you have never met &#8230; incredible,” Liz said.
This had all been more than she’d hoped for, but the encounters also left her with some lingering questions that may never get answered. She couldn’t ask her biological mother about what happened. Even if she’d been able to ask her mother those questions, she’s not sure she would be able to tell her why she’d been left in a laundry room, what day she was actually born or whether through all those years, her mother ever thought about the child she abandoned.
Liz’s biological family’s story is a complicated one, filled with emotional landmines. Her biological parents ultimately got married, but that was almost 19 years after Liz’s birth. Her biological father said he didn’t know of her existence or that of her two sisters who share the same mother. He had raised another family during that time, and only married Liz’s biological mother after his first wife passed away. As Liz figured all this out, she felt compelled to protect some of those family members who didn’t know about her and this complicated history. But that also meant that she didn’t get the opportunity to ask some of the questions she wanted to ask.
“At least I was conceived out of love,” she said.
She felt lucky to have made these connections. They’ve triggered all this thought about nature and nurture, she said. She found that she could see many of her traits in her new found siblings and birth father. Making all these connections helped her explain a little bit more about herself as well, she said.
Liz said she doesn’t know what will come from all this, but learning this history and meeting her biological family has helped her. Liz doesn’t know if the relationships with her biological family will endure, the bond she has with her family hasn’t changed and only become stronger.
Liz said she shared her story, in part, because she and her new found sisters believe that there may be at least one other sibling out there who Liz wants to find. She believes her sibling would have been adopted in the Chicago area through Jewish Services in late 1954 or early 1955.
Liz is still trying grapple with what these new connections have meant to her.
“So unreal,” she said. “(There is) no way to describe the emotions.”

Putting It Together

When Kelli read the message, she froze thinking that her next move would likely change her life forever.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-300x300.jpg" alt="KelliODonnell2" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-21525" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-1180x1180.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KelliODonnell2.jpg 1304w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
It was a note from a fellow 23andMe customer, who’d been identified as a second cousin. She had sent Kelli a message asking to share family information. The cousin – who Kelli never knew before – stated that she’d like to connect.
Kelli hesitated.
She was raised as the only child of a single mom and knew nothing about her dad. Once when Kelli was five, she’d asked her mother, “Why don’t I have a father?”
Her mother immediately broke down.
“My mom started crying and said, ‘That’s just the way it is.’”
It was so painful that Kelli simply never asked her mother again. It took 30 years and then, testing with 23andMe for Kelli to answer that long nagging question. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-300x300.jpg" alt="welcome" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-21519" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/welcome.jpg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“I never asked again because our relationship was so perfect, and I (wrongly) assumed that either something bad had happened to my mom or when she had told my father she was pregnant he wanted nothing to do with me,” Kelli said.
But then she made a connection to a second cousin using 23andMe, and together they learned the truth.
It all started because Kelli wanted to use 23andMe to learn a little more about herself.
“I never dreamed of what would happen next.”
Kelli decided to go ahead and connect with her second cousin and wrote her back. She told her that she didn’t know anything about her father. That her mother had gotten pregnant as a 19 year-old college freshman, then dropped out of school and moved back in with her parents to have Kelli.
After filling her cousin in on her story, Kelli gave her a way out.
“I gave her the option of ending contact with me,” she said.
But the opposite happened. Her cousin contacted her own parents, who said they wanted to help. They were thrilled that they found Kelli.
“And even if my father didn’t want to know me, they did,” Kelli said.
She also wanted to make sure her own family was OK with what she was doing.
“Probably one of the hardest things I had to do was tell (my mom),” Kelli said.
All the pain of the past was gone. Her mother and her family supported what she was doing.
Kelli had grown up in her grandparents’ home, with her mother and her aunt, who was 14 when Kelli was born. It was a large and loving family, and Kelli had always been close to her mom and her aunt, who was more like a sister.
As she connected with her cousin, the two began what amounted to a game of detective. Her new found cousins got tested, and they were able to see which side the family Kelli was related to. Then using what they knew about where Kelli’s mom had gone to college, they figured out which male cousins may have been at Penn State around that time.
Then they tested who they thought was Kelli’s grandfather. He was and that lead them to Kelli’s biological father.
“His and his family&#8217;s reactions were amazing, they were so excited to know about me,” Kelli said, who received messages from new family members welcoming her into the family.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DSC_0582-300x201.jpg" alt="DSC_0582" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-21518" width="300" height="201" />
When her biological father’s test results came in, his sister got him an “It’s a girl” balloon.
Kelli met her new found family in person in June.
“They even surprised me with presents and a cake for my birthday that was coming up, offering to sing to me 36 times to make up for the years they weren&#8217;t there,” she said.
Besides finding her biological father, she now has a new stepmom, a sister, a brother, a niece, grandparents and new uncles, aunts and cousins.
Her mother encouraged her to make the connections and has supported her all the way. Her mother’s father, her &#8220;Papap,&#8221; had passed away a few years ago. He had always been like a father to her, and for a time she felt pangs of guilt. She didn’t want it to appear that she was trying to replace him, but her family assured her that he would’ve approved.
Since connecting with her new found family, Kelli has moved back home to Pittsburgh from Chicago to get to know them better. She’d grown up just 30 miles from them. She’s learned that she and her biological father share an aptitude for math and a love of pizza, and she’s already grown close to him.
“I’d say right now we have a real father-daughter relationship,” Kelli said. “He insists I call him ‘dad,’ invites me to family vacations and we’re getting to know each other.”
She hesitates for a moment and adds:
“He cries sometimes when he thinks of how much of my life he missed, but we’re going forward now,” she said.

It’s a Girl

This past weekend, 23andMe’s Joanna Mountain and Christine Moschella, attended
<div id="attachment_21379" style="width: 309px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-21379" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/J-C.001.jpg" alt="Joanna Mountain, 23andMe's Research Director, and on the right Christine Moschella, 23andMe's Community Manager." class="size-full wp-image-21379" width="299" height="233" />Joanna Mountain, 23andMe&#8217;s Research Director, and on the right Christine Moschella, 23andMe&#8217;s Community Manager.</div>
the <a href="http://i4gg.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2014 Institute for Genetic Genealogy Conference</a> at the <a href="http://www.4hcenter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National 4H Center</a> just outside Washington, DC. The conference offered a great opportunity to connect again with genetic genealogists and learn from other experts in the field.
Over the three days Joanna, 23andMe’s Director of Research, and Christine, our Community Manager, shared details of some of our ancestry and genealogy features. But the pair were also there to hear feedback directly from our customers, and to answer questions about topics ranging from where things stand with the <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/update-on-the-regulatory-review-process-with-the-fda/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">FDA regulatory process</a> to tips on using our saliva kit.
<h6>
Using DNA Relatives 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg" alt="African American Example" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-19805" width="300" height="220" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1.jpg 661w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></h6>
Joanna presented an overview of two of 23andMe’s most popular tools – <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/23andme-ancestry-basics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">DNA Relatives and Ancestry Composition</a>. She went over &#8211; their origins, methodologies, and history &#8211; highlighting both the science behind these features and how they have been improved over a relatively short time.
The purpose for attending the conference was not only to share information with genetic genealogy enthusiasts but also to get feedback about how these customers are currently using the service and to hear ideas for improvements.
In numerous presentations and conversations with attendees, we heard about some of the creative ways customers are interacting with the information provided by 23andMe, and learned more about what kind of tools and information genetic genealogists in particular find most important.
<h6>Feedback</h6>
We also got some feedback about which features could be improved. In some instances, we are already in the process of making those improvements, which we are very excited about. We hope the community continues to provide the kind of constructive feedback that they’ve always given as we improve our ancestry features.
Overall it was a fun and intense three days for Joanna and Christine, who said they loved meeting some of our most passionate customers in person. It’s always motivating to hear about the difference that 23andMe has made for customers and how excited they are about what more we could do. It’s an excitement we share. Thank you <a href="http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CeCe Moore</a> and <a href="http://www.timjanzen.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tim Janzen</a> for organizing the conference, with plenty of help from their family members; we hope that they will organize another such event in the future!

DNA Relatives — Page 10