Some types of close relatives, like aunt, uncle, half-sibling, nephew, niece, grandparent, and grandchild have very similar patterns of shared DNA, making predicting those relationships from DNA alone difficult. That’s why some customers might see someone incorrectly labeled as one of these relationships. To help improve detection of these relationships, 23andMe is now using a new technique that analyzes DNA from full siblings.



23andMe, like other companies, uses shared segments of DNA to detect customers’ relationships to each other. But unlike other companies, we also combine information from every pair of relatives using 23andMe’s <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/large-human-pedigrees/">Bonsai software</a>. In addition to <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/23andmes-latest-feature-automates-genetic-family-trees/">building your 23andMe Family Tree</a>, Bonsai uses segments from multiple pairs of relatives at once, allowing it to make a better prediction than if we only analyzed you and each of your relatives one by one.&nbsp;



Still, no way of estimating relationships from DNA is perfect, and that’s true even for close relatives.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td>Relationship</td><td>Amount of DNA shared (95% confidence interval)*</td><td>Age distribution 23andMe uses (95% confidence interval)</td></tr><tr><td>Half-sibling</td><td>~19.8-30.2%</td><td><style>
span:after {
content: "\2264";}
</style>
<style>
span:after {
content: "\2264";}
</style> 17.4 year age difference</td></tr><tr><td>Avuncular (aunt/uncle- nephew/niece)</td><td>~20.3-29.7%</td><td>17.5 &#8211; 39.3 year age difference</td></tr><tr><td>Grandparental</td><td>~18.7-31.3%</td><td>45.3 &#8211; 67.7 year age difference</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">* Calculated using shared segments from the autosomes (i.e., excluding the X and Y chromosomes) from <a href="https://github.com/williamslab/ped-sim">simulated relatives</a>.</figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Using ages or shared parents to distinguish relative types</h6>



Telling these relative types apart is especially difficult because the amount of DNA each type shares is almost identical (see the above table). Because of this similarity, Bonsai relies on customers’ self-reported ages to make a decision about their relationships.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Even though general age differences exist between these relative types—half-siblings are typically closer in age than aunt-nephew or uncle-niece relatives—there are always families that don’t follow these trends. In such families, Bonsai is prone to making mistakes. For example, as shown in the above table, Bonsai will often consider half-siblings who were born 20 years apart as avuncular or it will confuse a grandmother for an aunt if the grandmother is less than 40 years older than her grandchild.



It’s worth noting that if the parent who links two half-siblings, a grandparent and grandchild, or an aunt/uncle and niece/nephew is a 23andMe customer, Bonsai would detect this and get the relationship right in nearly all cases.&nbsp;



For example, in the figure below, if we had data for Ava and Beau’s parents, Bonsai would almost always infer their mystery relative correctly as the aunt of the two siblings. Still, not all families have these parents or other informative relatives tested, and in the end, Bonsai predicts a significant fraction of half-sibling and avuncular relatives (aunt/uncle or niece and nephews) incorrectly when it relies on age data alone to distinguish between them (see the table near the end of this post).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31115" width="650" height="410" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative.png 856w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative-300x189.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative-768x484.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">On average, people share ~25 percent of their DNA with half-siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, or grandchildren. Based only on a DNA comparison of a pair of relatives, it is difficult to distinguish between these relationships and pinpoint the correct one.&nbsp; But there&#8217;s a simple trick to help narrow down the correct relationship when one person in the pair has a full sibling: If—at the same location in their genomes—a pair of siblings share identical segments of DNA with another relative, and those siblings do not share any DNA at those locations with each other, this often means that the relative is an aunt or an uncle to the siblings. Having more than 90 cM of such locations almost always means the relative is an aunt or uncle.</figcaption></figure>



A new approach for distinguishing aunts and uncles from other relative types



The ambiguities between these relationships would be impossible to fully resolve except for the fact that information from shared DNA segments can be combined and their positions analyzed across multiple relatives.&nbsp;



In the case of distinguishing avuncular from half-sibling or grandparental relationship types, we can leverage information carried by DNA segments that are shared between full siblings. Full siblings are related through both of their parents, and this leads them to have a somewhat unique pattern of sharing: an average of 25 percent of their DNA is contained in fully identical segments. This is roughly 880 centiMorgans in 23andMe customers. (<a href="https://isogg.org/wiki/CentiMorgan">CentiMorgans</a>, or “cM,” are a unit of measuring lengths of DNA.) In other words, full siblings have certain sections of their chromosomes where they each inherited a matching segment of DNA from their mom and, at the same location, a matching segment of DNA from their dad. With such high fully identical sharing rates, genetic relationship prediction methods rarely make mistakes when labeling full siblings.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">A Technique for Detecting Aunts and Uncles</h6>



Researchers at Cornell University used this signature of fully identical segments from full siblings to build <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929718301691">a technique for detecting aunts and uncles</a> of a pair of siblings even if their parent has not had their DNA tested. 



The idea is to find places where the shared segments between siblings Ava and Beau and their aunt or uncle indicate that the siblings’ parent has a fully identical segment with the aunt or uncle. If this recovers a lot of fully identical shared segments, we can be quite confident that the aunt or uncle is an aunt or uncle and not a half-sibling, niece, nephew, grandparent, or grandchild.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Full siblings </h6>



Consider the figure below that again shows DNA from the full siblings Ava and Beau, their father Tom, and the father&#8217;s full sister, Maria. In the highlighted regions, Ava and Beau inherited DNA from different copies of their father’s chromosomes: Ava inherited DNA from their father’s mom and Beau from their father’s dad. Because of this (and because they inherited DNA from different copies of their mother’s chromosomes), Ava and Beau have no shared segments with each other in the chromosomal region with a box around it. 



This fact allows us to reason about whether, in the boxed region, the untested father had a fully identical segment with Maria (the potential aunt). Sure enough, in this location, Maria is fully identical to Tom (has the same DNA as him) and has a shared segment to each of the siblings. All this allows us to conclude that, in this region, the father does have a fully identical segment to Maria, and, with enough of these present, the updated version of Bonsai would conclude that Maria is Ava and Beau’s aunt and not any of the other relationship types with similar amounts of shared segments.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="776" height="1024" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-776x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31116" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-776x1024.png 776w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-227x300.png 227w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-768x1013.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-667x880.png 667w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-894x1180.png 894w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer.png 952w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 776px) 100vw, 776px" /></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Can other close relatives have this pattern of shared DNA?</h6>



Importantly, neither a grandparent, grandchild, half-sibling, niece, or nephew is expected to have fully identical sharing with Ava and Beau’s parent, or with the parent of any pair of siblings. The key reason is that fully identical regions occur at places where two people inherited the same DNA from both their parents.&nbsp;



Because full siblings share the same two parents, fully identical regions arise most frequently between them. You can see this above by looking at Ava and Beau’s parent Tom and his full sibling Maria. A half-sister of Ava and Beau through Tom should not share fully identical segments with Tom because she would have inherited only one chromosome from him—and the other from her mother. That mother will typically be unrelated to Tom and so will not share DNA with him. Similarly, Ava’s grandson would inherit Ava’s DNA, but only on one of his chromosomes, making fully identical sharing with Ava’s father Tom impossible in nearly all cases. By the same token, Ava’s grandmother (Tom’s mother) shares DNA with Tom on only one chromosome, and Ava and Beau’s nephew, being Tom’s grandchild, could only inherit DNA from one of Tom’s chromosomes at any location.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Fully Identical Segments</h6>



Even though this technique&nbsp; is designed to detect aunts and uncles, when a half-sibling does not have these implied fully identical segments, that provides evidence that they are half-siblings, and this can override the age-based relationship detection in Bonsai.&nbsp;



For example, if two full siblings had a half-sister that is &gt;20 years older than each of them, the old version of Bonsai would predict the half-sister as the aunt of the two full siblings (assuming other close relatives such as the shared parent had not done a 23andMe test). However, the latest Bonsai version would look for implied fully identical segments, and, finding few or none of these, it would conclude that a half-sibling relationship is more likely than aunt. Therefore ages have less influence on the Bonsai relationship prediction for these classes of relationships (half-sibling, avuncular, and grandparent-grandchild) than before this new release.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Incorporating this technique into Bonsai greatly improves relative prediction accuracy</h6>



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td>Relationship to full sibling pair</td><td>Percent correct without IBD011</td><td>Percent correct with IBD011</td></tr><tr><td>Aunt/uncle</td><td>98.7%</td><td>~100%</td></tr><tr><td>Half-sibling</td><td>75.6%</td><td>83.8%</td></tr><tr><td>Grandparent</td><td>97.9%</td><td>98.6%</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



We have incorporated this technique (which researchers called IBD011 for reasons described in the summary figure below) into the latest version of Bonsai. The table above shows the percent of relatives that Bonsai correctly infers both without the IBD011 signal and with it. Bonsai does very well in both settings, but always much better when using IBD011, so it now works better at telling apart half-sibling, avuncular, and grandparent-grandchild relatives.&nbsp;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Here’s how you can apply this updated Bonsai method to your relative predictions:</h6>



You can use this updated Bonsai method by rebuilding your family tree. To do this, you can request a recalculation of your tree through a link in the DNA Relatives FAQ page, in the question called “<a href="https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/faq/#how_do_i_recalculate">How do I recalculate my tree?</a>”&nbsp;



The 23andMe database currently includes over 2 million customers who could be affected by this update, which translates to many thousands of relationships potentially changed. For those of you with a full sibling and a predicted half-sibling, aunt, or uncle, the updated Bonsai may produce a different (and more trustworthy) tree.&nbsp;



Keep in mind that unfortunately your tree annotations don’t carry over when you rerun Bonsai. Still, some of you will see changes and the predictions Bonsai now makes are much more reliable for the close relationship types discussed here.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-ibd011">What is IBD011?</h6>



On average, people share ~25% of their DNA with their half-siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, or grandchildren, among a few other less common relationship types.&nbsp;



Based only on a DNA comparison of a pair of relatives, it can be very difficult to distinguish between these relationships and pinpoint the correct one.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="756" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-1024x756.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31117" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-1024x756.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-768x567.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-880x650.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-1180x871.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image.png 1390w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



But there&#8217;s a simple trick to help narrow down the correct relationship when one person in the pair has a full sibling: If — at the same location in their genomes — siblings share identical segments of DNA with a relative, and those siblings do not share any DNA at those locations with each other, this almost always means that the relative is an aunt or an uncle.&nbsp;

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

New Algorithm Cleans Up 23andMe Family Trees

By Jodee Prouse
I believe nothing is more important than family. But what do I mean when I say family? For me, it’s about more than the DNA we share. A surprise in my 23andMe report only made that belief stronger. 
What all this means for me is complicated by the fact that I’m estranged from members of my own immediate family. My relationships with my dad, my mom, and my sister broke down due to alcoholism and continued unhealthy family patterns. 
Our problems with alcohol were deep, starting with my dad’s drinking, which led to my parent’s divorce when I was eight. And it was alcohol addiction and mental illness that took my brother Brett —who also happened to be my greatest friend— when he took his own life in 2012.
For many reasons, including my own happiness and well-being and that of my husband and our own two sons, I made the painful decision to continue to love my father, mother, and sister from afar. I ceased all contact with them more than ten years ago.
<h6>Looking at Family Connections</h6>
So why did I decide to use 23andMe and peer into the genetics that our family shares?
<div id="attachment_29684" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29684" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Jodee-her-brother-300x236.webp" alt="Jodee, as a young girl, and her baby brother Brett" width="300" height="236" class="size-medium wp-image-29684" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Jodee-her-brother-300x236.webp 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Jodee-her-brother.webp 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Jodee and her little brother Brett, soon after his birth.</div>
In part, it’s because I’m drawn to the idea of understanding more about my connections to generations past. I have always known about my dad’s side and their roots in England. But I knew little about my mother’s side of the family. Growing up, I only met my mom’s parents, her sister, and that sister’s children, my two cousins. I never met, nor did my mother mention any of her aunts, uncles, cousins, or even grandparents. They were a mystery to me.
After sending in my sample to 23andMe late last year, I was so eager to get the reports I felt like a kid waiting to open presents on Christmas morning. When I finally opened my reports, I was actually a little letdown. The results confirmed that my ancestry on both sides of the family was mostly British. I opted in and looked over my health reports, too, which were interesting, but the unexpected information didn’t come until later. 
<h6>A Shocking Discovery</h6>
Just a few weeks after those initial results, I got an email alerting me to a message. I had opted in to participate in DNA Relatives and someone with whom I shared DNA had sent me a message. I logged in to read it.
“Hey Jodee, My name’s James Dodds and 23andMe says that we may be half-siblings,” the message began. “My dad, Jim Dodds, was from Ponoka, Canada, so I am wondering if that’s the connection. He was born in 1946.”
I’d never heard the name “Dodds” before, but Ponoka is near where I live now, in Alberta, and  near where my mother was born and grew up. I was in complete shock. I responded within ten minutes. When I shared it with my husband that evening and with my two adult sons, now 29 and 31, they didn’t quite comprehend what it meant. I knew instantly. DNA doesn’t lie. I didn’t know how this happened, but I was confident that this man who messaged me, James Dodds, was my half-brother.
<h6>Coming to Terms</h6>
After the initial shock wore off, the emotions flooded in. I was inundated with random memories, like my dad saving me from drowning when, as a five-year-old, I had walked off the edge of a pier during summer vacation. And I remembered his family, my grandma’s loving face, and the big Christmas get-togethers with everyone at my house. My earliest memory is of looking inside eggs using a red light with his dad, my grandfather, when I was three or four. I remembered being the oldest grandchild among all my cousins. And I remembered my dad’s siblings—Uncle Les, Auntie Myrna, and Auntie Mary—all of whom have stood by me and supported me through my life’s journey, never judging or condemning me or taking sides when it came to my complicated relationship with my father. They have loved me unconditionally while loving their brother, too. I LOVE my family. They are my family.
My heart shattered thinking that might not be true anymore. I also wondered, how did this happen?
<h6>The Backstory</h6>
I knew my mother was pregnant when she married my father, and their marriage wasn’t blissful, but I wanted to know more. Though it had been a long time since we’d spoken, I sent her an email asking about her connection and relationship with Jim Dodds. 
I knew my email would come as a shock to her. So I waited for her response.The next morning she replied: 
“I dated someone with that name when I was 18.” 
This confirmed my initial instinct: Jim Dodds was my biological father.
I don’t think anyone would ever blame me if I was angry at my mother, but that’s not what I felt. Instead, I reached out to her to talk and we decided to meet face to face for the first time in almost a decade.    
My mother explained she had fallen in love with a bull rider, Jim Dodds. But she was so young and had already experienced trauma in her life. And she had a past relationship with my father. They had a daughter together four years before I was born, in 1964, and my mom had to give her up for adoption. When she got pregnant at 19, she broke things off with Jim and told him she was getting married without ever mentioning her pregnancy. She believed my dad was my biological father.
<h6>The Meaning of Family</h6>
I was devastated when I learned that my dad wasn’t my birth father. But I realized that family is so much more than being related by blood or sharing DNA. It is about being there for each other through the good times, and especially the bad. It is the relationships in our lives that provide a sense of security and belonging. It is the people that hold your heart gently in their hands. It is about feeling that you are in a safe space, no matter what you share. Family is about feeling valued, respected, and understood. It is being able to say you are sorry when someone says you hurt them.
I am incredibly blessed to have so many relationships like this in my life. And I’m not alone in that feeling. We live in a world where the definition of family has expanded. Children continue to be adopted, people get divorced and then remarried with blended families, foster parents care for children, and individuals pursue parenthood and family through routes like surrogacy and IVF. There are so many scenarios, and all of those people are no less loved, no less connected, and no less family than those that share DNA. The one crucial ingredient is love. I always knew this; it just took a few days to catch my breath and realize it.
Today, I am still processing this news. 
As much as my dad and I had our own challenges throughout the course of our lives, I loved him very much. I never wished for a different father. 
I also regret that my biological father Jim passed away in 2021 before we could meet. He will never know that I was born. He will never know his amazing grandsons.
Yet I’ve realized that if this hadn’t been kept a secret, my life wouldn’t have been enriched by the people I love most. So, as hard as it has been to work through all of my emotions about this revelation, I feel my life is as it should be.
I would never want to alter the course of fate. I love my family and was always meant to be Brett’s sister.

Jodee, as a young girl, and her baby brother Brett

A 23andMe Customer Reflects on the Meaning of Family  

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-28683 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1-300x170.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="170" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1-300x170.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1-1024x580.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1-768x435.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1-880x498.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1-1180x668.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/customer-panel-v1.jpg 1996w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
This holiday, 23andMe invited three customers to join us virtually and share their DNA discovery stories. Hearing from customers first-hand reminds us of how our work impacts people’s lives. It also gives us a glimpse into our customers’ experience.
This year we heard from Jason, Kimberly, and Lynn. They each shared their stories and described their plans to expand their (virtual) holiday tables this year in order to fit their newfound relatives.
Customer Lynn Mendelson summed up the feeling each had when she said that neither the pandemic nor the quarantine changed the joy of finding family this year.
“Nothing can dampen this discovery,” Lynn said.

 <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997-1024x768.png" alt="" class="wp-image-28681" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997-1024x768.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997-300x225.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997-768x576.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997-880x660.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997-1180x885.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_8997.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
 
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<h6>Finding Family</h6>
It was Lynn who kicked off the discussion by greeting 23andMe employees with an enormous smile. She explained that as an adoptee who knew almost nothing about her <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-health-ancestry">health and ancestral background</a>, every detail in her health and ancestry reports thrilled her. But nothing compared to the feeling of shock when she logged into her 23andMe account and saw the words, “predicted niece” written on top of a new message. It was her first connection to her birth family.
Lynn’s next few months felt like a dream as her niece told her about her birth family for the first time. This culminated with her meeting her eight brothers and sisters, and even more extended relatives. You could hear the love in her voice as she described her new family and teared up while sharing a touching video showing the first time she met them.
Lynn, who’s now in constant contact with her siblings, feels as if she’s grown up with them her whole life saying:
“What’s changed for me is that my husband and I now have this massive, loving &#8211; I can’t tell you how loving they all are &#8211; family.”

 <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="551" height="1024" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172-551x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-28682" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172-551x1024.jpeg 551w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172-161x300.jpeg 161w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172-768x1427.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172-473x880.jpeg 473w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172-635x1180.jpeg 635w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jason-Payne-e1608065570172.jpeg 1188w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 551px) 100vw, 551px" /></figure>
 
<h6>Finding a Birth Father</h6>
Like Lynn, Jason, a 24-year-old from California, found family on 23andMe. But Jason described something different. He said for him growing up without a father, left him with a feeling of emptiness.
When he first used 23andMe he said he initially was disappointed because he didn’t see any close matches listed on his DNA Relatives. That changed within a month of first opening his reports when Jason received an email from a woman who said that, according to 23andMe, she was his aunt!
Jason laughed as he explained, with admiration, the impressive online sleuthing she navigated in finding him. Together they worked out the identity of his father.
During the panel discussion at 23andMe Jason proudly shared photographs of his first meeting with his father. He said they both are excited to build a  relationship. The impact of making this connection was profound, Jason said.
“I feel like I’m now really me, the best version of myself and I’m complete.,” he said, “I feel like I can take on anything.”

 <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="604" src="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly-1024x604.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-28690" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly-1024x604.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly-300x177.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly-768x453.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly-880x519.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly-1180x696.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Katelyn-Kimerbly.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
 
<h6>Finding the Silver Lining</h6>
Kimberly, the third customer on 23andMe’s panel, echoed the feelings of both Jason and Lynn when she expressed the sense of gratitude she had at finding relatives.
Kimberly was adopted from Korea to a small family living in Colorado. She didn’t know anything about her birth parents in Korea and said when she tested with 23andMe she was hopeful to learn something but didn’t have high expectations of finding relatives.  That might explain why she was absolutely shocked when she saw a predicted half-sister at the top of her DNA Relatives list.
Kimberly described feeling a roller-coaster of emotions as she reached out to her newfound sister, and then waited three days for a response.
Her sister, Katelyn, who was also adopted shared photographs of her parents and grandparents from Korea. Katelyn had previously connected with them through her adoption agency.  She then tried to help Kimberly find her own place in the family.
Katelyn’s investigation ended with life-changing answers, which she revealed to Kimberly on a phone call. After asking Kimberly to sit down, Katelyn told her that she wasn’t Kimberly’s half-sister, but Kimberly’s niece. More, the people in the photographs Katelyn had previously shared were her siblings and parents who had been looking for Kimberly for over 30 years.
Kimberly described feeling overcome with emotions during her first Facetime conversation with her family in Korea. Today with the help of Google Translate and a friend who speaks Korean, Kimberly said she has been able to continue building her relationship with her large Korean family. She also told us she’s become incredibly close to Katelyn, her niece and initial 23andMe match, who feels more like a sister she’s known her entire life than a newly discovered niece. Kimberly concluded her story saying:
“This is certainly my silver lining in this dark cloud of a global pandemic.”

23andMe Employees Hear from Customers 

For Ann, a college genetics professor in Pennsylvania, her interest in 23andMe started over ten years ago with scientific curiosity, but it quickly evolved into something more profound.
<div id="attachment_28335" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28335" class="wp-image-28335 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ann.yezerski-and-Mom-300x215.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="215" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ann.yezerski-and-Mom-300x215.jpeg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ann.yezerski-and-Mom-768x549.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ann.yezerski-and-Mom-880x629.jpeg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ann.yezerski-and-Mom.jpeg 895w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Ann on the right and her mom.</div>
First, Ann dug into information about her health, learning about conditions for which she had increased genetic risk of developing. Then she used 23andMe to discover more about her ancestry and her family&#8217;s Irish, Polish, Italian, and German ancestry. Most recently came something even more unexpected — Ann used 23andMe to help her find her elderly mother&#8217;s long-lost sister. This, in turn, enabled her to bring the two sisters together for the first time.

It happened last year on her mother&#8217;s 76th birthday. They&#8217;d just had a celebration, and Ann came home and happened to open an email from 23andMe about a new DNA Relative. She was stunned.
&#8220;I called my mom and said, &#8216;I have one more gift for you,'&#8221; Ann said. &#8220;I found your sister.&#8221;
Ann and her mother learned of the sister after extensive genealogical research, eventually creating a family tree with more than 7,000 relatives.
&#8220;It was so exciting to match 23andMe DNA (Relative) results with the relationships on our tree,&#8221; Ann said.
She also used 23andMe me to help some of her distant relatives find biological parents.
But they also discovered more about Ann&#8217;s mother&#8217;s father. He had a child with another woman before he got married to Ann&#8217;s grandmother. Ann thought they&#8217;d never find her mother&#8217;s sister and had exhausted the historical resources. They assumed her sister, who would be over 80 years old, might have already passed away.
&#8220;We figured the window of finding her alive was closed,&#8221; Ann said.
But using her 23andMe results helped them track her down.
&#8220;We were very lucky to find her and all of our new family,&#8221; she said.
As miraculous and wonderous as this was, the connection was just another deeper layer to DNA discoveries Ann has been making over the years. Whether it&#8217;s learning that her twin boys are identical and not fraternal twins, or using her 23andMe results to inspire her college students, or digging into her raw data, Ann said she&#8217;s endlessly excited by genetics.
&#8220;I really appreciated the information I&#8217;ve received,&#8221; she said.
23andMe has helped feed her interest in the science, she said. She&#8217;s curious about the function of different genes, and their role in human traits and the risk of disease. Her academic work has focused on dyslexia, but her twin sons have also primed her interest. For example, she&#8217;s eager to learn more about &#8220;half identical twins,&#8221; also known as<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47371431"> &#8220;semi-identical twins.&#8221;</a> Ann wants 23andMe to study this very, very rare phenomenon to see if our massive data set may identify more cases.
More than anything else, Ann said 23andMe has helped feed her insatiable interest in learning more about herself, her family, and the world of genetics.
&#8220;I think I&#8217;ve used about every angle you can use on 23andMe,&#8221; said Ann.
Here&#8217;s to her finding even more.

A Gift of Knowledge

By Rachael Rifkin
Identical twins Audrey Bell and Cynthia McFadden, and their younger sister Stephanie, knew that using 23andMe to explore their DNA would give them insight into their ancestry and shared genetics, but they never expected it would also unearth clues to a 75-year-old unsolved mystery.
<div id="attachment_28054" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28054" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1316-300x215.jpg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-28054" width="300" height="215" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1316-300x215.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1316-768x550.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1316.jpg 844w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Twins Audrey and Cynthia, with their sister Stephanie in the middle.</div>
Audrey was the first to dive into her DNA with 23andMe. She wanted to see the DNA differences between her triplets, two are identical and the third is fraternal. But her 23andMe Ancestry Composition report surprised her because she didn’t see any Italian ancestry. It was a shock. The family’s last name is Palmadesso, so their Italian heritage was part of the sisters’ identity. They’d all grown up hearing that her dad’s family was Italian and Irish. 
It wasn’t until Cynthia got her 23andMe reports a few months ago, and opted-in to view her DNA relative connections, that the mystery started to deepen for the sisters. 
<div id="attachment_28060" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28060" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/New-York-Daily-News-Article-290x300.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-28060 size-medium" width="290" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/New-York-Daily-News-Article-290x300.jpg 290w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/New-York-Daily-News-Article.jpg 700w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px" />A New York Daily News article about the kidnapping.</div>
<h6>Not Italian</h6>
Just like her sister, her report didn’t show any Italian ancestry. Instead, it showed she had Irish, Scottish and Spanish ancestry. She also matched with someone she’d never heard of, a 79-year-old man named Tommy Martin. The two share 22 percent of their DNA. That’s the same percentage Cynthia would share with a grandparent or uncle. Cynthia was so surprised by these findings that she asked Audrey to opt-in to view her DNA relative connections to see if she matched with Tommy. She did. 
The sisters had no idea who Tommy was or how they were related. 23andMe cautions customers about the possibility of <a href="https://you.23andme.com/public/unexpected-relationships">uncovering something unexpected</a>. The sister’s reports certainly fell into that category. At first, they hypothesized that their father, who passed away in 2017, was the child of an unknown affair, and that Tommy was their grandfather. Then they connected with Tommy and his half-sister Mary. As communicated back and forth with Tommy and his sister, a different and much more complicated story began to emerge.
<div id="attachment_28062" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28062" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-300x300.png" alt="" class="wp-image-28062 size-medium" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-300x300.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-150x150.png 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-768x768.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-880x880.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-1180x1180.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-271x271.png 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-372x372.png 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-574x574.png 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys-980x980.png 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Jerry-and-Tommy-as-young-boys.png 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photos of the brothers as young children with Tommy on the right.</div>
<h6>A Kidnapping </h6>
Audrey and Cynthia realized that based on his age, Tommy was clearly an uncle, not their grandfather. When they learned why he tested with 23andMe in the first place, the sisters were stunned. Tommy was searching for his younger brother, Gerald “Jerry” Martin, who was kidnapped in 1945.
Tommy and Mary told the twins what happened. He was six, and his brother Jerry was 4 when it happened. The brothers were riding their bikes in Manhattan when a woman approached them. She asked the boys if they wanted some candy. Both said yes. The woman told Tommy to wait while she and Jerry went to buy some. Tommy never saw Jerry again. 
<h6>Looking for Leads</h6>
Audrey, Cynthia and Stephanie wanted to learn more. They found an article on the kidnapping. At first, police suspected Tommy and Jerry’s biological mother was somehow involved. There had been lingering issues with the dissolution of her relationship with Tommy and Jerry’s father, who the children lived with. But the police determined she wasn’t involved. Apart from those early suspicions they had few leads and the trail quickly went cold.  
For years, the boy’s father, Harold, checked in with the police department to see if there was anything new about his Jerry. Detectives never found anything solid.
While 23andMe predicted that Cynthia and Audrey were Tommy’s nieces, it was unclear if the twin’s father, who they knew as Richard Rocco Palmadesso, was, in fact, Tommy’s missing brother, Jerry. The sisters suspected that he was, but couldn’t be sure.
<div id="attachment_28061" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28061" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189-300x253.jpg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-28061" width="300" height="253" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189-300x253.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189-768x649.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189-1024x865.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189-880x743.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189-1180x997.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_6189.jpg 1242w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />The photos of the two brothers with Richard on the left just before he passed away in 2017, and Tommy on the right.</div>
<h6>Family History </h6>
So they turned their attention to what they knew about their father’s parents, Angelo and Isabel Palmadesso. When their dad was 12, his mom died, so Richard was sent to live with his father’s brother. As an adult, Richard didn’t keep in touch with his father, the uncle who helped raise him or his cousins, and he rarely spoke about them. He did, however, stay in touch with the woman who’d been his nanny, Helen Horgan. Later in life, Helen even lived with Richard, his wife, and the twins. She died when Audrey and Cynthia were 10.
With their father and grandparents now dead, as well as Helen, the sisters had few relatives to turn to for answers. They decided to reach out to his uncle’s son. He told the sisters that the whole family knew their dad was not a blood relative. He believed that it was only their father who didn’t know. 
<h6>Is Their Dad the Kidnapped Boy?</h6>
But there was no story of a kidnapping. Instead, the family rumor was that Helen, the nanny, was his biological mother. According to family lore, he’d been taken in because Helen was a single mother. The twins also learned that the family believed Richard’s mother was a madame, and Helen was one of her prostitutes. The family assumed the father was a local gangster who Helen dated. 
Cynthia and Audrey weren’t sure what to believe, but using 23andMe they found that they didn’t share any DNA with their Palmadesso cousins. That left them with two clear facts — they were related to Tommy, but not to the Palmadesso family. But was their dad Tommy’s kidnapped brother?
<h6>A Theory</h6>
The sisters decided to go back and create a timeline of events. They discovered that Jerry was kidnapped in June of 1945, a couple of months before the man their father Richard thought was his father returned from his service in WWII. 
The sisters hypothesized that perhaps Richard’s mother may have lost a baby or felt the need to give her husband a son, and that may have been a motive to kidnap a boy, but they don’t know. They know that Richard’s parents did not have any other children of their own together, although Richard&#8217;s mother did have an older daughter from a prior relationship. 
Perhaps Richard’s mother thought her husband would be assuaged by having a child to raise, but all that was speculation.  The sisters really didn’t know.
And there was also some evidence to suggest their theory isn’t right. For instance, they found a birth certificate for their dad. It listed his birth year as 1943, which would make him two years younger than Jerry Martin. But as the twins point out, it could be a fake birth certificate. After all, their dad’s mom wouldn’t have known how old the kidnapped child was, but the twins simply don’t have evidence to show their theory is true. 
<h6>A New Family Connection</h6>
Meanwhile, Audrey and Cynthia have been getting to know Tommy and his half-sister Mary. 
They visited Tommy in Florida around Thanksgiving and learned he loves many of the same things their dad did. They shared a love of movies, acting and coconut cake, and have similar personalities. There’s also a physical resemblance.
“Our dad was always kind, funny, and silly. Always dreamed of being an actor, but never actually acted in anything,” said Cynthia. “Uncle Tom is very similar. He even had some headshots from when he was younger.”
One unexpected outcome of their investigation is that they’ve gained more insight into the kind of person their dad was. From talking to their cousins and other people in his life who knew him when he was younger, they learned that his parents were both hard on him. He would sit at the table and his mother wouldn’t allow him to talk. Their cousin told them that their dad was quiet and anxious all the time, which is basically the way he was as an adult. 
“Although our dad was very kind and we were close to him, there was always a disconnect with him and family,” Cynthia said. “It now makes more sense why he may have been this way.”
As for Tommy and his family, the kidnapping took a toll on both his parents and Tommy. He remembered that their father cried a lot, and he never stopped believing that his son Jerry was still out there and alive. 
Rachael Rifkin’s <a href="https://www.rachaelrifkin.com/">work</a> focuses on using storytelling and similarities to bridge the gap between generations, cultures, and backgrounds. Her newsletter, <a href="https://us4.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=4f80b2efda61c68e52aec9ae6&#038;id=e0c42f4bd2">Theory of Relative-ity</a>, is about the similarities that run in families, and what we can learn from those similarities.
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Rachael Rifkin

23andMe Connection Offers Clues to a 75-year-old Mystery

By David Silverberg
During Christmas three years ago, when Doug Clarke and his wife exchanged 23andMe DNA kits as gifts, he had no clue his life would be irrevocably changed.
<div id="attachment_27957" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27957" class="size-medium wp-image-27957" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PatriciaDoug-e1580924652355-300x231.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="231" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PatriciaDoug-e1580924652355-300x231.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PatriciaDoug-e1580924652355.jpg 666w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Doug and Patricia after meeting in Santa Cruz for the first time.</div>
The 54-year-old Lexington, Kentucky resident always long known he’d been adopted and he wasn’t searching for his birth parents. Rather, he took the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/howitworks/">23andMe test</a> to find out if he was at risk for certain health conditions.
But when the results revealed that a relative lived in New York, Doug reached out to him and found out this man was his cousin. Doug’s newfound cousin told him, “My aunt, Patricia, is your mother.”

<h2>A New Family Relationship</h2>
Within weeks, Doug was on a plane to Santa Cruz where his birth mother lived. It had been a tough year for Doug: he lost his father months before taking the DNA test, and the two had been very close growing up.
“To find my birth mother helped ease that sting of losing the father who raised me,” Clarke said in an interview.
Meeting his birth mother at a lighthouse near Santa Cruz proved to be the catalyst for a new relationship he never thought he would find.
“There’s literally no way I would have met my mother without 23andMe,” Doug said.
Patricia and Doug joined 23andMe for a special Mother&#8217;s Day event in 2018 where we chronicled their story in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaGUyrlp9ac">video</a>: 
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XaGUyrlp9ac" width="966" height="543" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<h2>Spending Time</h2>
But it’s the relationship that the two have formed since that initial meeting, that has been the true gift. Their story of building a bond that has only grown since that first meeting is something they both have worked at nurturing. Now they talk every week on Sundays and spend holidays together. They have merged their two families allowing them to gradually become acquainted.
It’s been a blessing for Patricia Johnson, Doug’s birth mother. For years she felt shame and guilt for giving her son up for adoption.
“I always wondered if my baby was going to be OK, if he was doing well,” Patricia, 79, said. “But now that I know him and have seen what a great man he’s become, I no longer feel that guilt.”
In fact, Doug has been there for her during unfortunate mishaps, like when she suffered a fall and endured a compression fracture in her spine in December 2019.
“And who was there to take care of me after the long plane ride from Kentucky? My son,” she said. “He did my laundry, cooked for me, and applied those IcyHot patches on my back.”
Patricia saw a lot of similarities between the two even at that initial meeting.
“Our eyes are the same for sure, and we make the same hand gestures,” she said. “Even our likes and dislikes with food and music are the same!”
<h2>What New DNA Relatives Should Expect</h2>
It’s not just Doug she’s bonded with but his family too.  Patricia is gradually getting to know Doug’s wife Lisa, his daughter-in-law, his sister, nephew, and brother-in-law. For his part, Doug is in touch with his half-sister and cousins, aunts and uncles from Patricia’s side of the family.
Doug cautioned that adoptees should temper their expectations if they reconnect with their birth parents via 23andMe or other methods.
“Don’t think the heavens will open and angels will start singing and you’ll have the perfect relationship,” he said. “Just go into it with an open mind. And if you don’t go through with it because you’re scared, you might have missed out on an opportunity of a lifetime.”
Patricia is often quick to share her story of reuniting with her long-lost son, so much so she even inspired someone randomly.
When her WiFi connection malfunctioned, a technician came into her home to fix it. The two began talking and Patricia said she:
“Got all blubbery and told him about Doug and what happened and what this DNA test gave me. He told me he is also adopted and just as he was walking out the door he said ‘I think I’m going try 23andmMe and look for my parents.’ And I said, ‘Honey, do it! It’s worth every cent you have!’”
David Silverberg is a freelance journalist and content creator who regularly contributes to BBC News, The Washington Post, Business Insider, and Gamespot. He is also a theatre artist and wrote about his Jewish heritage in his new solo show Jewnique. Find him at<a href="http://davidsilverberg.ca"> DavidSilverberg.ca</a>

A mother and Son Fostered New Relationship

By Andrew Todhunter
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Thomas Johnson was curious. How much Native American ancestry did he have? A software developer and former US Army medic from Stockton, California, he grew up in the northwest corner of Indiana. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1529-scaled-e1580857298484-300x258.jpg" alt="" class="alignright wp-image-27948 size-medium" width="300" height="258" />

“Where I grew up, there’s a belief that everyone from that part of the country has some percentage of Native American ancestry,” he said. 

Born in 1971, Thomas grew up with a single mom and never knew his biological father. Whenever he asked his mother about that side of the family, he got nowhere. 

“I thought this was a mystery that I’d never solve,” he said. 
<h6>A DNA Relative Match</h6>
In January of 2017, he bought a 23andMe <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA test kit</a>, mailed it in, and waited.  When he received the email that his reports were ready, Thomas logged in one afternoon at work. After opting in to <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">23andMe’s DNA Relatives</a> feature, he learned that his DNA had matched with a close genetic relative: Edwina Kimble. A name he’d never heard before. The test estimated that Edwina was his paternal grandmother. There at work, staring at the screen, Thomas started to cry. 

He immediately began to search for his grandmother online, and soon came upon her obituary. She had passed away less than two months before he submitted his DNA test, at age 94. 

After decades without answers, the timing stunned him. “I just missed her,” he said. 
<h6>Becoming a Baby Brother</h6>
He found the names of her six children in the obituary—one daughter and five sons. One of those men, he knew, must be his biological father. He soon found a cousin on his father’s side who shared a mutual friend. One connection led to another, and finally, he reached his grandmother’s descendants. 

“The brothers knew right away I was Tommy&#8217;s boy,” he said. “They knew he had dated my mother, and they welcomed me right into the family.”

Thomas learned that he had an older sister named Charnell, who is four years older than him. 

“She later told me she’d always wanted a baby brother,” he said. 
<h6>Connecting</h6>
Their father’s only children, Thomas and Charnell grew up in the same neighborhood. They went to the same private elementary school and the same high school, but the four-year age gap was just wide enough to keep them from overlapping. After he’d made contact, Thomas communicated almost daily with his family in Indiana. In their conversations and video chats, Charnell noticed that Thomas had the same laugh and many of the same mannerisms as their father, even though the two had never met.

“When I first called my Dad on the phone,” Thomas said, “we just laughed. Since then we’ve met in person&#8230; A few months ago, he called me ‘son’ for the first time.”

For her part, Charnell embraced her role as big sister. “She was all in my business about my love life,” Thomas said, laughing. “She was an only child and she told me, ‘I want nieces and nephews from you!’”
<h6>Getting Some Help Finding His Valentine</h6>
Charnell and their cousin Anita started matchmaking for Thomas remotely and set up a profile for him on a dating app for those seeking long-term relationships. At first, nothing came of it, but in July of 2017, he found Maria Vejar.
<div id="attachment_27951" style="width: 289px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27951" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1592-1-scaled-e1580857362382-279x300.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-27951 size-medium" width="279" height="300" />Thomas gets down on his knee to ask Maria to marry him.</div>
Maria had a beautiful smile and they shared many interests, including family, faith, hiking, and the importance of helping others. Thomas reached out, and Maria responded. They communicated online for two weeks, then moved to conversations by phone. When they first met in person, said Thomas, everything felt right. They grew steadily closer, and Thomas proposed at a 23andMe event called DNA Day. They’ve set the date for November of 2020. 

“Maria is so giving,” said Thomas. “She’ll always do for others before she does for herself. I’ve never met anyone like her. She told me, ‘I haven’t known love like this, ever.’ And I feel the same way.” 

<h6>A Growing Family</h6>
Maria comes from a large, tight-knit family in California, and has two children of her own—20-year-old Samuel and 18-year-old Mariah. In his new life with Maria, Thomas is gaining another big family he never expected. 
<div id="attachment_27953" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27953" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_1637-scaled-e1580857587951-300x261.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-27953 size-medium" width="300" height="261" />Maria said yes.</div>
And the curiosity about his percentage of Native American ancestry, that led Thomas to take the DNA test in the first place? Those results came back too. He’s only a fraction Native American, at 1.7 percent, but he has a doting older sister and cousins and nieces and nephews and a father he thought he’d never find.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “I just became an uncle twice, and I have three godchildren. I have family birthdays all over my calendar. When I was younger, more family was the one thing I wanted most that I didn’t have. When I joined the military, they became my family. Later, the church became my family. Now I have real family.”

And here on Valentine’s Day, he and Maria have each other.

<a href="http://www.andrewtodhunter.com/about">Andrew Todhunter</a> is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and lecturer at Stanford University. The author of three books, including the PEN USA Literary Award-Winning A Meal Observed, his journalism includes dozens of articles in publications such as National Geographic, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal.

Andrew Todhunter

Thomas Finds Family, and then His Valentine

By Rachael Rifkin
November is National Adoption Awareness Month, which recognizes the importance of adoption not just for the more than <a href="https://adoptionnetwork.com/adoption-statistics">7 million</a> Americans adoptees, but the nearly 100 million Americans who have an adoptee in their immediate family.
In honor of National Adoption Awareness Month, we wanted to share Claire Mitchell and Stefanie Beard’s story.
<div id="attachment_27753" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27753" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-Stefanie-2-300x173.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-27753 size-medium" width="300" height="173" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-Stefanie-2-300x173.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-Stefanie-2-768x444.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-Stefanie-2-1024x592.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-Stefanie-2-880x509.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-Stefanie-2.jpg 1138w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Stefanie, on the left, and her new-found cousin Claire.</div>
Like many adoptees, the two twenty-somethings, turned to DNA testing to find out more about themselves. They wanted to know more about their ancestry, maybe <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">find some biological relatives</a>, and explore the health side of testing. 
Claire and Stefanie live only 12 miles apart in Pennsylvania, but the two didn’t know each other. 
That all changed after using 23andMe and discovering that they were first cousins once removed. As they got to know each other they learned something more. They don’t just share DNA. Twenty years ago both young women were adopted from the same town and orphanage in China. 
“Both of our minds are blown,” Stefanie told the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/china-adoption-adoptee-dna-temple-university-20190315.html">Philadelphia Inquire</a>r earlier this year.
<h6>The First Connection </h6>
Their surprising story began four years ago when Claire, 20, who now attends Bryn Mawr College, submitted her DNA to 23andMe. She hoped to find biological relatives.
Fast forward to Christmas last year when Stefanie, now a 22-year-old student at Temple University in Philadelphia, decided to use 23andMe with her sister Kristyn, who was also adopted from China. 
Stefanie was more interested in settling a longstanding debate between her and Kristyn — who had a higher percentage of Chinese ancestry in their DNA. (Stefanie turned out to be 77 percent Chinese and 13 percent Vietnamese to Kristyn’s 99 percent Chinese.) 
What she didn’t expect was to find a biological relative, let alone one living in the United States.
<h6>What Are The Odds?</h6>
<div id="attachment_27754" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27754" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-and-Stefanie-e1574820229581-300x280.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-27754 size-medium" width="300" height="280" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-and-Stefanie-e1574820229581-300x280.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Claire-and-Stefanie-e1574820229581.jpg 581w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Claire, on the left, and her cousin Stefanie.</div>
Despite the surge in DNA testing and the number of adoptees finding and connecting with relatives, for adoptees from China or Korea or other countries, it’s very rare to find a close family connection.
Like a lot of adoptees, Stefanie and Claire both grew up wondering about their birth parents. They wondered if they had other biological relatives out there. Was it possible to ever find them?
 Stefanie was born in Huazhou in 1997 and Claire in 1999. When Stefanie was 11 months old, she was adopted by her parents, Donna and Michael Beard, and grew up in a loving home in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Adopted at the same age, Claire grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. They are both the second adopted daughters in their families.
Despite wondering about their origins and biological relatives, neither Claire or Stefanie, expected to find a relative, let alone one just a short train ride away. Finding a sibling or cousin actually isn’t <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/china-adoption-adoptee-dna-temple-university-20190315.html">unheard of</a> due to the proliferation of DNA testing. 
<h6>International Adoption</h6>
The first big wave of international adoptees came from Korea after the Korean war. China became a primary origin for adoptees after the creation of China’s one-child policy in 1980. The policy, instituted to slow population growth and avoid famine, resulted in the abandonment of thousands of children (often girls, since boys were preferred for a variety of cultural, social and economic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_preference_in_China">reasons</a>). 
To combat the problem, China began its international adoption program with many children ending up in the U.S. China officially ended its one-child policy in 2016.
In the last few years with the end of the one-child policy, many of those adoptees and birth parents have been looking to reunite. For families in China trying to find their children, there are even social media platforms like WeChat and the birth family search company <a href="https://mytaproot.org/">My Taproot</a>, to help families find and connect with each other. 
<h6>Using DNA to Help in the Search</h6>
While DNA testing offers a simpler way to connect with biological relatives, it is more difficult for adoptees from China to find matches because most of those on these sites come from the United States. 
That’s what makes finding each other so special said Claire and Stefanie. 
“It was unreal. To hear from her and see that she was such a close match as a relative was unbelievable. Even more shocking was the fact that she went to Temple (like 9 miles away from my school) and her family lived in the area. It was insane in that regard,” said Claire.
<h6>Getting to Know Each Other</h6>
Since they initially matched up on 23andMe, they’ve gotten together quite a few times. They’ve met up to watch the Dragon Parade for Chinese New Year, gone to dinner and the movies. Claire and Stefanie have spent the shorter holidays together at Stefanie’s family’s house since they live in Pennsylvania. 
In fact, Claire will be coming over to their house this Thanksgiving. They get along really well and enjoy spending time together. In general, they try to meet up at least once a month. Mostly they eat and talk, making up for lost time. 
<h6>Becoming Part of the Family</h6>
At that first meeting, Stefanie met Claire at her train station to go to dim sum in Chinatown. Stefanie and Claire both texted their moms a picture of the two of them together. Their moms had the same reaction— “Tell her we say welcome to the family!”
“It was such a happy moment. My heart was so full that night. The universe wanted this to happen. There’s no other explanation,” said Stefanie.
Claire agreed. 
“To have actually been able to meet a blood relative of mine who’s only separated by perhaps our great-grandparents have made me feel just a little less lonely in a world full of people who seem to know each other in the way that only biological kin can,” said Claire. 
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Rachael Rifkin’s <a href="https://www.rachaelrifkin.com/">work</a> focuses on bridging the gap between generations, cultures, and backgrounds through storytelling. She also once <a href="http://bit.ly/2ZsRzAU">recreated</a> eight photos of her relatives to highlight the traits and stories we all share with our families.

Adopted Separately in China, Cousins Wind Up Almost Next Door

When they met for the first time, Tamara Miller and Leslie Wheeler were struck by their similarities. They both are Korean adoptees, and both share a cheerful disposition and closets full of colorful hats and clothes. They even carried nearly identical purses at that first meeting. 
<div id="attachment_27321" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27321" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SBYT8-225x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-27321 size-medium" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SBYT8-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SBYT8.jpeg 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />Leslie, left, and Tamara.</div>
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Though they were strangers, the two share the same birth mother. And beyond all the uncanny things they had in common, the sisters noticed a deeper connection right off: an immediate sense of sisterhood and love. 
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“You wouldn’t know that siblings could be so similar just through blood,” said Tamara. 
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She was stunned by all she had in common with her newfound sister, and yet “we couldn’t have been raised more differently or led more different lives,” she said.

<h6>Soldier Fathers</h6>
The sisters never met as children, and now, with children of their own, they’re making up for lost time and filling in the blanks in their family story. Their story is reminiscent of 23andMe stories from other Korean adoptees. 
<div id="attachment_27316" style="width: 299px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27316" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bQQZu-e1564598306146-289x300.jpeg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-27316" width="289" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bQQZu-e1564598306146-289x300.jpeg 289w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bQQZu-e1564598306146-768x798.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bQQZu-e1564598306146-985x1024.jpeg 985w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bQQZu-e1564598306146-846x880.jpeg 846w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bQQZu-e1564598306146-1135x1180.jpeg 1135w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 289px) 100vw, 289px" />Tamara&#8217;s birth father, Harry Andrews, with her and Leslie&#8217;s birth mother.</div>
Both of their fathers had served in the Army in Korea. 
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Leslie was living with her grandmother when Tamara was born. Leslie’s father was white, while Tamara’s father was an African American GI. The family was poor and already struggling to make ends meet. Tamara was placed in an orphanage and adopted as an infant. Leslie’s adoption happened much later.
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“I had a hard life in Korea,” she said. “The country was poor and we were starving. It was a miracle if we ate two meals a day. Going to school was really hard. I just didn’t fit in with the Korean kids because I was so different looking. I was a little girl living in a country that wasn’t accepting of half-American kids.” 
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Leslie had lived with their mother and her American soldier father until the age of 2. When he returned to America, saying he’d come back for them. Then she lived with her mother and relatives until her mother passed away. Leslie was adopted by an American family at the age of 13.
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<h6>A Short History of Adoptions from Korea</h6>
The sisters’ story is part of a wave of orphaned and mixed-race Korean children adopted after the Korean War by American families. Now well into adulthood, many of these adoptees have turned to DNA testing. They hope to learn more about their cultural roots, and in some cases connect with biological family.
<div id="attachment_27320" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27320" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/aGdiP-e1564598558120-300x293.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-27320 size-medium" width="300" height="293" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/aGdiP-e1564598558120-300x293.jpeg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/aGdiP-e1564598558120.jpeg 467w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Tamara as an infant in Korea.</div>
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International adoptions didn’t really begin in the US until the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_Persons_Act_of_1948">Displaced Persons Act of 1948</a>, which allowed orphans from WWII admission to the US for permanent residence. But it wasn’t until 1955, and the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HDklDwAAQBAJ&#038;pg=PA7&#038;lpg=PA7&#038;dq=%22Relief+of+Certain+War+Orphans%22+korean+adoption&#038;source=bl&#038;ots=ocLy46VVbp&#038;sig=ACfU3U0eq2jwpXxoJ5Mq9Gicbzh7ZMhARA&#038;hl=en&#038;sa=X&#038;ved=2ahUKEwjQ99Ky163jAhUFOH0KHek0B5gQ6AEwCXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&#038;q=%22Relief%20of%20Certain%20War%20Orphans%22%20korean%20adoption&#038;f=false">Bill for Relief of Certain War Orphans,</a> that large scale international adoptions — initially from Korea — to the US were possible. Today China is the main hub of international adoption. But for at least <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504211427866">40 years</a> most international adoptions originated in Korea, with at least <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504211427866">200,000</a> children adopted worldwide. That only lessened in the late 1980s after Korea began limiting the number of children who could be adopted out of the country.
<h6>Holt International</h6>
Early on in the United States, it was standard practice for many families to Americanize their adopted child as quickly as possible. That often meant cutting them off from their cultural roots. Thus many generations of adoptees were estranged from their cultural heritage and had very little if any information about their birth families.
<div id="attachment_27330" style="width: 231px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27330" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Tamara-before-her-adoption-221x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-27330 size-medium" width="221" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Tamara-before-her-adoption-221x300.jpeg 221w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Tamara-before-her-adoption-648x880.jpeg 648w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Tamara-before-her-adoption.jpeg 747w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 221px) 100vw, 221px" />A photo of Leslie before her adoption.</div>
With the hindsight of more than half a century of adoptions from Korea, the groups that handled many of these adoptions now see the importance of these cultural and family connections, said Susan Soonkeum Cox, Vice President of Policy &amp; External Affairs at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holt_International_Children%27s_Services">Holt International Children&#8217;s Services</a>, an adoption agency that helps American families adopt children from outside the United States, including Korea. The couple who originally started Holt, Harry and Bertha Holt, were also instrumental in passing the Bill for Relief of Certain War Orphans.
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“We (now) have the benefit of several generations of adoptees,” said Soonkeum Cox, a Korean adoptee herself. “We’ve come to be aware that a child’s history, where they’re from and their beginning. (It) is very much a part of who they are as they go throughout their lifetime.” 
<h6>Reconnecting with Korean Ancestry</h6>
That desire to connect has expanded the services Holt now offers. The agency assists with family reunification, “motherland tours” of Korea, and Korean culture education. In particular, Holt offers “heritage camps,” where adoptees can learn more about the Korean language, dance and cuisine and discuss issues of identity. Other organizations like <a href="https://meandkorea.org/">Me and Korea</a> also provide adoptees with opportunities to learn more about Korean culture, connect with fellow adoptees and travel to Korea as well. In addition, Holt and some other agencies <a href="https://www.holtinternational.org/pas/adoptee/korea-2-adoptees/search-for-birth-family/">assist</a> adoptees over the age of 18 with finding more paper records and other information about their birth and adoptions, sometimes even connecting them with biological family.
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But frequently because of the nature of some of these early adoptions or the lack of a clear paper record, DNA is the only option for learning more. As companies like 23andMe have grown, so too have the chances of adoptees <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">finding relatives</a>. The nonprofit <a href="https://www.325kamra.org/">325 Kamra even </a>distributes DNA kits to Koreans and Korean adoptees worldwide, to try to help Korean adoptees find family. And then there are Facebook groups like the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/471938126211984/">KAD 23andme Results Group</a>, where Korean adoptees can share their results, questions, and concerns. 
<h6>Other Korean Adoptee Stories</h6>
Embracing testing has resulted in a wave of stories like Tamara’s and Leslie’s.
<div id="attachment_26535" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26535" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/siblings-2-300x269.jpg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-26535" width="300" height="269" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/siblings-2-300x269.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/siblings-2.jpg 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Justin and Renee.</div>
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Most recently a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/women-adopted-South-Korea-learn-sisters/story?id=64367065">pair of sisters</a> adopted from Korea found each other through 23andMe, and learned they grew up just 30 minutes from each other in Michigan. 23andMe also helped reunite identical twins <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-customer-stories/23andme-reunites-identical-twins-separated-birth/">Amanda and Katey</a>. Born in Seoul, and adopted by different American families, the sisters, both in their 30s, connected for the first time after using 23andMe. 
Another pair of sibling adoptees from Korea, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-customer-stories/siblings-reunite-using-23andme/">Justin and Renee</a>, were also well into adulthood before finding each other. Justin had been abandoned on the steps of a theater in Seoul, when he was a toddler. The next day, his sister Renee, who was 5 at the time, was left at a market. They reunited 30 years later on Justin’s 36th birthday. And testing has helped others simply clear up mysteries. For example, another pair of sisters adopted together from Korea, grew up not knowing for sure that they were related. 23andMe confirmed that they indeed were <a href="https://www.popsugar.com/family/What-Like-Being-Adopted-From-Korea-White-Family-45954580">biological sisters</a>.
<h6>Tamara and Leslie</h6>
Although they all share a connection to Korea, each story is unique. 
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For Leslie and Tamara, the story isn’t just about sisters connecting, but also about coming to terms with their mixed ancestry, and filling in the gaps of their family history. They were able to find each other because Leslie’s son, Noelin Wheeler, had tested and matched with Tamara on 23andMe. Leslie didn’t even know she had a sister until Noelin, a tattoo artist known for his appearance on SpikeTV’s show Ink Master, found Tamara.
<div id="attachment_27317" style="width: 241px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27317" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Leslie-and-Noelin-e1564598669982-231x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-27317 size-medium" width="231" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Leslie-and-Noelin-e1564598669982-231x300.jpeg 231w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Leslie-and-Noelin-e1564598669982.jpeg 655w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px" />Leslie and her son Noelin.</div>
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When Noelin texted his mom Tamara’s photo, she immediately knew they were related.
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“I looked at Tamara and felt like I was staring at my mother,” Leslie said.
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The two have been able to meet each others’ families and spend time with each other. They’ve become a part of each other’s lives, seeing each other a couple times a year and talking weekly. 
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“Leslie has given me a sense of identity,” said Tamara. “As an orphan you don’t always know why you are the way you are, why you think or react the way you do. Now I understand myself better.” 
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These last three years, in particular, have been especially life changing for Tamara. Not only did she find Leslie, last year she found five paternal siblings, all of whom ended up living close to her. She enjoys spending time with them regularly, as well.
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“Generations of people have been brought together as a result of these DNA tests, and all of our lives have been enriched,” said Tamara.

DNA Relatives — Page 2