A generation ago it was a felony to marry across racial lines in Virginia and 15 other states in the south, and the repercussions of those laws are still felt today.
<div id="attachment_25461" style="width: 396px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25461" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Mildred_Jeter_and_Richard_Loving.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-25461 size-full" height="258" width="386" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Mildred_Jeter_and_Richard_Loving.jpeg 386w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Mildred_Jeter_and_Richard_Loving-300x201.jpeg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 386px) 100vw, 386px" />Mildred Jeter and Ricahrd Loving, the couple who were at the center of the US Supreme Court Case Loving v. Virginia that struck down laws against interracial marriage.</div>
The movie “<a href="http://focusfeatures.com/loving">Loving</a>” tells one side of that story, the moving tale of Mildred and Richard Loving, who defied the law and married. The couple’s almost decade-long legal fight ended in 1967 with the landmark Supreme Court ruling,<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/388/1/case.html"> Loving v. Virginia</a>, which erased laws in 16 states that prohibited marrying outside your race.
This week marks the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/12/opinion/loving-virginia-50-year-anniversary.html?_r=0"> anniversary</a> of that case.
For many other couples that crossed racial lines and dared to fall in love in those years, the Loving case came too late. Their stories have yet to be told.
Katrina Callsen, a young mom and law student in Virginia, only recently uncovered her own family’s side of that story using 23andMe.
Her dad, Clarence, a retired Army sergeant first class, was adopted at birth and never knew anything about his biological parents, but with the help of his daughter’s 23andMe results he was able to learn his story for the first time.
<div id="attachment_25451" style="width: 259px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25451" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth-249x300.jpeg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-25451" height="300" width="249" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth-249x300.jpeg 249w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth-768x924.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth-851x1024.jpeg 851w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth-731x880.jpeg 731w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth-980x1180.jpeg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Clarence-youth.jpeg 1204w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 249px) 100vw, 249px" />Clarence as a child.</div>
Clarence’s father was black, and his mother was white. They were young and in love, but they lived at a time and in a place, Virginia, where mixed race couples could not legally get married.
When Clarence’s birth mom became pregnant she and his birth father said they couldn’t get married and she didn’t feel she could keep a black child, Katrina said. 
After giving up Clarence, the couple never saw their son, or each other again.
Fifty years later, as Clarence pieced together the story. With the help of 23andMe and Clarence’s daughter, Katrina, he was first able to find his biological father by first connecting with a cousin, who also happened to live in the same town and only a few blocks away.
“My dad is an adoptee from a completely closed adoption and I did 23andme to gain some ancestry and health related insights,” Katrina said.
By testing she learned that her dad was also mixed race, she said.
“When I got my 23andme results back and found out I had a cousin living down the street from me,” she said
It was through this cousin that Clarence and Katrina were able to find out who his father was.
Now 85, Clarence’s biological father had never told anyone — his wife or stepchildren — that he had had a child.
<div id="attachment_25453" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25453" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Katrina-as-child-225x300.jpeg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-25453" height="300" width="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Katrina-as-child-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Katrina-as-child-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Katrina-as-child-660x880.jpeg 660w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Katrina-as-child-885x1180.jpeg 885w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Katrina-as-child-scaled.jpeg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />Katrina as a child.</div>
When Clarence was finally able to meet him in person, he told his son that his biological mother was white, and although they had wanted to, at the time it was illegal for them to marry in Virginia.
“My biological grandpa told my father he thought of him many times and … made a plea to meet him before it was too late, and there he was delivered on his doorstep,” Katrina said.
After that initial meeting and using information that Clarence’s father shared, he and Katrina were later able to find his birth mother.
She too had kept his birth secret, and the agony she had at having to give up her son.
Some of the emotion around that history is still raw, and both of Clarence’s birth parents coming to terms with finding their son. For their part, Clarence and Katrina have asked that his birth parents names not be used to respect their privacy, and allow Clarence time to get to know them and their families.
For Katrina the story brings full circle a painful personal and national history. Recently, Katrina and her dad spoke on a panel moderated by lifestyle blogger Serein Wu, at the<a href="http://www.mixedremixed.org/mixed-race-multiracial-americans-celebrate-50th-anniversary-interracial-marriage/"> Mixed Remixed</a> festival in Los Angeles celebrating the anniversary of the Loving case, and shared their story.
“Got us all in tears in here,” Tweeted Katy Monty after listening to Katrina and her dad talk about finding his biological family.
Even after the law changed, biracial couples have struggled. Katrina said her parents also faced some of those same tensions. Clarence is black and Katrina’s mom is white, and initially their parents did not embrace the marriage. But their mixed race children grew up in a different time.
“Thirty years and four kids later they are still together,” said Katrina.
<div id="attachment_25463" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25463" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image1-300x288.jpg" alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-25463" height="288" width="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image1-300x288.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image1-768x736.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image1-1024x981.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image1-880x843.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image1-1180x1131.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Clarence and Katrina at the Mixed Remixed festival in Los Angeles with moderator Serein Wu.</div>
And making this connection and learning of the story of her dad’s birth has been important for Katrina and her father. Finding family roots, history and relatives has connected them to their history. Even Katrina’s move to Charlottesville to attend law school feels to be part of that. Her biological family has deep roots there and she herself feels connected to the place, a connection that — as the daughter of an Army NCO who regularly moved every few years — she’d never had before.
“It is hard, if not impossible, to put in words what it means to suddenly find a biological family, to find roots, to realize that the place you have felt naturally drawn to holds centuries of your family history,” Katrina said. “Genetics can hold stories and answers we didn’t even know we were seeking. It can show you the family you never knew, who lives around the corner, and is overjoyed to welcome you back home.”

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

The Legacy of Loving

This Father’s Day is a little different for Esther Blue.
This year, after finding her biological father, Farhad, with the help of 23andMe, she can actually wish him a Happy Father’s Day.
For all her life, Esther had lived with questions about who her father was and where he came from. With few clues and years of futile searching, she had largely given up hope of learning even the basics.
“I didn’t have anything,” said Esther, a 29 year-old journalist and mother of three living in Arizona. “I just knew that he was originally from Iran.”
At one point she’d even talked to a private investigator to help her find her biological father, but the investigator turned her away.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Esther-and-her-dad-300x251.jpg" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25446" width="300" height="251" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Esther-and-her-dad-300x251.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Esther-and-her-dad.jpg 500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“He told me to save my money.” There wasn’t enough to go on, she said.
It doesn’t happen for all customers, but Esther was fortunate that cousins she didn’t know also happened to use 23andMe.
All the stars had to align for her to have made this connection and they did, her cousin later told her. 
When they did, the speed with which she made her connections felt overwhelming. She used 23andMe mostly to see if what her mother had told her was true, that she was half Middle Eastern and, on her mother’s side, Latino. So the first thing Esther looked at were her ancestry results.
“I wanted to confirm I am Middle Eastern,” she said.
She did, seeing a large percentage of ancestry from the Middle East in her results, as well as ancestry from southern Europe and Native American ancestry. But she didn’t expect the close cousin matches. In her DNA Relatives, she saw a handful of second and third cousins, including a few who had Iranian ancestry.
She sent a message to one of them, her second cousin Pejman. Within hours, she got a message back. When she shared her photo with Pejman, he knew right away who her father was.
“I thought it would be this long journey to find things out or that maybe I’d need to speak Farsi,” said Esther. “I just didn’t expect this. My whole life changed in one day.”
Esther’s cousin asked a family member to contact her biological father, who was in France visiting his other daughter, Esther’s younger half sister, Julia.  When they tracked him down, he thought the urgent message was because someone in the family won the lottery. When he learned the news, it felt as if he was the lucky winner.
“My God, after 28 years I have another daughter,” he said<a href="http://www.rightthisminute.com/video/rtmtv-dna-test-leads-woman-biological-dad"> later</a>.
It’s hard for Esther to describe that emotional first meeting.
“Someone needed to pinch me, I thought ‘How could this be real?’” said Esther. “A miracle happened.”
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[vc_video link=&#8221;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA1FSwnbc94&#8243; align=&#8221;center&#8221;]

Happy Father’s Day

It was a simple Mother’s Day gift, but it took 47 years to deliver it. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Star-Advertiser-e1495228883750-227x300.png" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25337" width="227" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Star-Advertiser-e1495228883750-227x300.png 227w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Star-Advertiser-e1495228883750.png 346w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px" />
Last week, on the island of Kauai, Tod Walker, a musician and father of two, got to hug his mom, Marguerita “Landis Gravenor, for the first time.
“I can’t stop hugging her and holding her hand,” Tod told a writer with the <a href="http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/05/14/hawaii-news/lee-cataluna/son-reunited-with-mom-in-time-for-mothers-day/">Honolulu Star Advertiser</a>.
An adoptee, who found his birth mother with the help of 23andMe, Tod’s story was featured in the Mother’s Day edition of the paper.
Seeing him after giving him up as a baby was something his mom had been waiting for all these years.
“When I hugged him at the airport, it was just tears of joy,” said Marguerita, who was an unwed teenager when she had Tod. “It wasn’t heavy, like sadness or guilt. It was just joy. I was holding my son.”
Read the story <a href="http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/05/14/hawaii-news/lee-cataluna/son-reunited-with-mom-in-time-for-mothers-day/">here</a>.

A Mother and Son Reunion

Sarah Biggers hadn’t been looking for a mother. She already had one.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sarah-Biggers-and-her-birth-mom-Wendy-300x225.jpg" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25276" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sarah-Biggers-and-her-birth-mom-Wendy-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sarah-Biggers-and-her-birth-mom-Wendy-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sarah-Biggers-and-her-birth-mom-Wendy-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sarah-Biggers-and-her-birth-mom-Wendy-880x660.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sarah-Biggers-and-her-birth-mom-Wendy-1180x885.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“I didn’t have a need to find my birth family,” she said.
But when she became pregnant, the fact that she didn’t really know anything about her biological family weighed more heavily on her. For years, whenever she had a doctor’s visit, or a physical, she couldn’t offer any information about her own family medical history. That part of the forms was also a blank, so with a baby on the way she wondered what she would be passing on to her child.
“I had that moment where I was like ‘I have no idea what to expect,’” she said.
Then for Mother’s Day, her husband got her 23andMe as a gift.
“Who would have thought that sending off a little spit would one day connect you with someone so deeply,” Sarah said.
<h4>A Connection</h4>
Sarah’s results connected her with a second cousin, and together they quickly deduced that her cousin’s mother and Sarah’s grandmother were sisters. From there, they figured out who Sarah’s mother was. It took Sarah a few months to compose a letter.
“I thought if this was the only thing that I get to say to this woman, I need to do it right,” she said. “I wanted to tell her everything was not just OK, but better than OK.”
Sarah didn’t want to disrupt this woman’s life. Sarah just wanted to make sure she knew she was happy, married and the mother of a beautiful young girl.  She sent off the letter and waited, for weeks and weeks.
“I literally was checking every day,” Sarah said.
And then in November, more than a month later, Sarah heard back.
“It was the most beautiful message and so sweet and everything an adoptee would want and need to hear,” Sarah said. “I can’t describe that feeling.”
Her biological mother, Wendy, received the letter, but it took her a long time to respond. When she did, Wendy apologized for the delay. Even though she thought of her daughter every day, she explained, she hadn’t spoken about her to anyone else in all that time.
“The note you sent me was an answer to every single prayer that I ever prayed for you,” Wendy wrote. “That you were loved, healthy, successful and happy.”
These letters started a flurry of more messages back and forth and then a few marathon-long phone calls, as Sarah shared with Wendy her story and Wendy told Sarah of her birth.
<iframe loading="lazy" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RD0OnLsgfFs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
&nbsp;
<h4>Capturing Time </h4>
Wendy had been in high school when she got pregnant. She went away to a group home for unwed mothers where she had to finish school while she waited to deliver her baby. At the group home she stayed with other girls from different walks of life, all in the same predicament. When the baby came, Wendy was alone in the hospital. She begged to be allowed to have more time with her baby, and was permitted to stay an extra day. Wendy was 19 years old and for more than three decades she never talked about what happened to anyone, that was until she met Sarah.
Even though she never talked about her baby, Wendy said she never stopped thinking about the girl she’d given birth to on a night in August 1984. She kept her baby close to her two days, rocking and singing her to sleep with the words to the 70s pop song,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1YxczPEPrs"> “Time in a Bottle.&#8221;</a>
And then Wendy gave her up. Sending her off with an outfit and blanket she’d crocheted herself, and a letter that told her daughter’s new parents that she never would come to disrupt their lives, or come searching for “Lauren Elizabeth,” the name she’d given Sarah. But if her daughter ever came in search of her, “I’ll never turn her away.”
Then she was gone. Over the years, all Wendy had left was a memory and a snapshot of her infant daughter taken secretly with a Kodak camera. She kept the photo in her nightstand, saying a prayer for daughter every night, and every August on her infant’s birthday she’d have a cupcake. At Christmas, she’d send a gift to another child in her baby’s honor.
Wendy eventually married and, at 32, had another daughter, Hannah. She always thought the daughter she gave up would one day find her — Wendy even set aside fine china for a gift for her wedding. And then did Sarah find her.
The two met in person on the coast of North Carolina earlier this year. Sarah got to meet her grandmother, and her half sister, Hannah, who has also tested with 23andMe. Sarah and her sister share about 26.6 percent of their DNA, relatively high for half sisters. They, in turn, have also met Sarah’s husband and daughter. 
“I just can’t say enough how amazing this is for people and how life changing,” Sarah said. “It’s just so awesome, that you can spit in a tube and in the end it would complete your life.”

Sarah’s 23andMe Mother’s Day Story

Inside each of us is a beautiful, rich genetic story. Some of which is told through the people with whom we are related.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25268" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1.jpg 414w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> 
23andMe’s new Ancestry Report has reimagined how you see these relatives — both close and distant — not just matching you with people with whom you share pieces of DNA, but putting those matches into context that tells you something about yourself.
Our new Ancestry Report introduces you to the 23andMe customers who make up Your DNA Family in a whole new way.
<h6>Your DNA Relatives, Let&#8217;s Do the Numbers</h6>
So how many relatives are we talking about, here? As you trace your family tree back in time, you can see that you have more ancestors with each generation. Look back 150 to 200 years, for instance, and you likely have 64 fourth-great grandparents. That many people have a lot of descendants. In fact, using a simple model where each family has only two to three children, we estimate that the average person has 4,700 fifth cousins out there!
You can find a number of these cousins when you use 23andMe’s DNA Relatives tool. Most 23andMe customers find hundreds, or even thousands of DNA Relatives who have also chosen 23andMe to explore their genetic heritage. That’s a lot of people — and a lot of stories — to sort through!
Your DNA Family helps you get started with a high-level overview of your 23andMe DNA Relatives grouped by their prediction relationship to you. These groups include close relationships (up to second cousins), third to fourth cousins, and distant cousins (5th cousins or more distant).
The significance of these distant cousins isn’t so much about the number of matches you have, but what these matches can tell you about your family history. You may see this in how your DNA relatives share surnames, or ancestry or hometowns. This information could help inform some of what you may already know about your ancestors and where they came from. Or you may learn something new.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25234" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1.png" alt="" width="979" height="523" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1.png 979w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1-300x160.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1-768x410.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1-880x470.png 880w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 979px) 100vw, 979px" />See Your DNA Relatives Around the World
Seeing your relatives in a new way offers you insight about your ancestry you might not otherwise have. The Your DNA Family report features map to show you the <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25222" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-300x221.png" alt="" width="300" height="221" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-768x566.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-1024x755.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-880x649.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-1180x870.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles.png 1652w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />distribution of your DNA Relatives across the United States and around the world.
The pattern of how those matches plot on that map may reflect both decades-old migration  or more recent patterns. But they tell you a story that could include a family lodged in one region generation after generation, or ancestors who immigrated across continents or oceans seeking new opportunities.
<h6>Ancestry Composition Patterns</h6>
Human history is the story of migration, and clues to that story is also found in your DNA.
While your history is tied to the history of each of your cousins through at least one common ancestor, it is also tied to specific regions in the world.
23andMe’s Ancestry Composition can show you the mix of ancestry you have, but we’ve also added in features that help you compare that mix with your DNA Relatives.
This helps you explore the commonalities and differences in your ancestry. You can see this in a summary of the Ancestry Compositions of your DNA Relatives. You’ll find out how many different populations are represented in the ancestry of your DNA Family as well as how many of your relatives have ancestry from each of those populations.
<h6>Traits of Your DNA Relatives<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25265" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-300x186.png" alt="" width="300" height="186" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-300x186.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-768x477.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-880x546.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module.png 918w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></h6>
23andMe’s New Ancestry Report also looks at this pool of DNA Relatives and asks what beyond segments of DNA do you share.
By looking at shared traits, the new report offers you another way of looking your DNA Family.  For instance, maybe you have more DNA Relatives who can wiggle their ears, or a chorus of singers with perfect pitch. Perhaps your DNA Family has more than its fair share of vegetarians.
The New Ancestry Report looks at  a collection of common habits, tastes, characteristics and abilities — drawn from responses to  surveys 23andMe customers answer —  and then we tell you how your DNA Family stands out. We can do that by comparing the percentage of your DNA Relatives who report having each trait to the matching percentage of all 23andMe customers.
<h6>A Starting Point for Your DNA Relative Search</h6>
Want to dig further? Connect with relatives using the DNA Relatives tool. In the tool, you can find individual relatives and explore their profiles one at a time. Message your cousins to share information, and compare DNA segments with multiple matches to find clues to your shared family history.
To begin and end with words from our CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki:
“Every day I watch people connect with their DNA family, and see how the concept of family can evolve into something greater — and even more meaningful.” 
Find out how your DNA Family can help you discover your rich genetic story.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25231" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AC_comparison_apr12th-e1492192125921.png" alt="" width="640" height="518" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AC_comparison_apr12th-e1492192125921.png 640w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AC_comparison_apr12th-e1492192125921-300x243.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />

Meet Your DNA Family

The best things take time, or at least that’s one way of looking at why Jonathan Hay waited so long to meet his biological mother in person.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25211" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/jon-hay-quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“I’ve been avoiding it for two years out of fear,” said Jonathan, a music producer and publicist.
But the fear evaporated when the two finally met in February.
“It was a life-changing experience that instantly helped unwrap all the emotional bondage and deep rejection that a lot of adopted people suffer with,” he said. “Looking in her eyes, I could see the decades of pain, loss and love that penetrated to the soul. I was finally home.”
We first<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/how-i-met-my-father/"> wrote about Jonathan</a> when he found his biological father two years ago.
Adopted in Florida, Jonathan could identify his birth father, Ronnie Bradley, and a half-brother, Ryan, after connecting with a close cousin using 23andMe.
Jonathan also got some help from an adoption search expert in the state. Together, they were also able to identify his mom and fill in some of the blanks around his birth and adoption.
His dad told him that Jonathan was a new Navy enlistee living in San Diego when he was born. He didn’t even know his former girlfriend had been pregnant and only learned about Jonathan’s birth after getting the legal papers to give up the baby for adoption. 
Jonathan’s mom, Pam Nicely, lived in Florida and was still a teen struggling for her future.
After piecing together the story, Jonathan—ever the publicist—decided to create a reality show about meeting his birth parents for the first time. He began to pitch the idea for what, at first, he called “The Haymaker.” Everything was in place, but he couldn’t escape the fear of an in-person contact. 
That changed in November of last year when he met his brother Ryan for the first time.
“He’s actually the first person I met from my biological family,” Jonathan said.
His brother was able to give Jonathan even more background on the family, and most importantly, Ryan knew how Jonathan could contact his mother.
When Jonathan finally called his mom and planned his trip to see her in Ashtabula, Ohio, he didn’t bring any cameras.
“Everyone wanted to film it, but I just decided to keep it private,” he said.
Spending time with his biological mother, getting to know her, ask her questions helped relieve some of the fear Jonathan had.
“Meeting her really gave me the strength to follow through with the TV show,” he said. “I was kind of at a roadblock in my life emotionally, but that was a breakthrough.”
Now he is gearing up to begin filming in Florida in April for an in-person meeting with his dad. The show is now tentatively titled “Daddy Issues” and features Jonathan’s daughters, Iliana Eve, 14, and Hannah Lynn, 16. Both girls also have budding music careers that Jonathan is trying to support. 
As for the show, Jonathan said he’s working with Angie Fenton, a well-known Louisville television correspondent. Part of the attraction of working with Fenton was that she underwent this process herself. Fenton documented her journey meeting her biological father in an Oxygen network series called “Finding My Father.&#8221;
“We&#8217;ve been talking to A. Smith Productions as well,” said Jonathan. “(There are) a lot of options for the show. We need to get the pilot done first, which is what we are filming in April in Florida.”
Whatever happens with the show, Jonathan said using 23andMe to connect to his biological family sent him on a pilgrimage that is helping him unpack the complicated emotional baggage he’s been carrying through his life.
“Thank you so much for creating your product,” he said.

Coming Home

Maria Biskie spent her life searching.
Born in the Philippines in 1973, she never knew her father. In her lowest moments, she’d longed to have him by her side. That day came earlier this year, after testing with 23andMe. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Maria-Dad-238x300.jpg" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25306" width="238" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Maria-Dad-238x300.jpg 238w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Maria-Dad.jpg 642w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 238px) 100vw, 238px" />


“There were a lot of times in my life which were very rough and very hard for me,” Maria told the Hays Daily News in Hays Kansas. “I could only wish he was there.” 

Maria and her biological father, Bill Tittle met in person for the first time at in early March. For Tittle, who never married and never knew he had a child, meeting Maria was a little overwhelming.

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“I’m not an emotional guy, but it gets to me,” he said while wiping away tears.


Tittle was in the Navy and stationed in the Philippines in the early 1970s when he began dating Maria’s mother. This was during the waning days of the Vietnam War, and when he left on a deployment without much notice he didn&#8217;t know his  girlfriend was pregnant. When he returned, she was gone.
Maria’s mom had moved back to her hometown a few hours away to have her baby. Tittle tried but was unable to find her, he told the paper
Tittle is now retired and lives in Venice California. He never married. Learning he has not only a daughter, but also four grandchildren, brings him great joy.
“I have no other kids, and it was good news to me. I tell people I got the email a young man fears and an old man looks forward to,” he said.


For Maria, finding her father has brought her peace.


“I found everything I’ve been looking for in my life,” she said.


Check out her story here.

A Wish Comes True

The stories all start the same – with a 23andMe kit given at Christmas – but then they follow their own fascinating narratives that are as unique as the customers who share them<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-17056 size-full alignright" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ChristmasTree.jpg" alt="" width="424" height="283" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ChristmasTree.jpg 424w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ChristmasTree-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px" /> with us.
Almost daily we hear from people who’ve learned something new about themselves or their families using 23andMe. Some of the stories are moving or mysterious, others have a lighter touch, but they all carry the weight of someone’s humanity.
With the holiday just around the corner, we wanted to share a few stories with you.
There’s Pat Nosko’s story of finding family.
“It’s the most amazingly beautiful gift I could have ever hoped to give my mother,” said Kelle Scott, who gave her mother Pat a kit at Christmas. Pat, who’d been adopted and knew little about her biological parents, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-customer-stories/a-most-amazing-gift">found a sister </a>she never knew she had.
It’s was Lenny Scoval’s wife how gave him a kit for Christmas, and he too <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/boy-south-carolina/">found family</a>.
An adoptee, who at 52, connected with seven of the twelve siblings he’d never knew he had.
It was Adam’s partner Steve who gave him a kit as a present. Adam <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-customer-stories/a-list-for-midlife">found biological family</a>, but also found that he could help someone else, someone who like himself had been searching for biological family. Adam probably best summed up what many customers have told of about using 23andMe.
“This entire experience has helped explain why I am the way I am,” he said, “and I am forever grateful.”
Happy Holidays! 
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A tree in the snow in a forest that is lit up like a Christmas tree.

The Gift

Sarah Laskey, 23andMe Product Scientist
The Chromosome Painting is one of my favorite parts of the 23andMe experience because it is packed with information. Then again, it can also be a little intimidating because it shows so much all at once. In this blog post, I’ll walk through some basics of what your Chromosome Painting shows. And I&#8217;ll explain what kinds of stories it can tell you about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">your genetic ancestry</a>.
<h6>What is a Chromosome Painting?</h6>
Your Chromosome Painting is another way of looking at your Ancestry Composition results. It shows a colorful representation of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up your genome. Here is a photo of what real human chromosomes look like under a microscope, side by side with my Chromosome Painting:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24850 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-880x464.png" alt="" width="880" height="464" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-880x464.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-300x158.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-768x405.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-1024x540.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-1180x623.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype.png 1520w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
In the microscope photograph on the left, the chromosomes are laid out vertically. In the Chromosome Painting on the right, they’re shown as colorful horizontal bars. In both images, the chromosomes are shown in pairs and labeled with numbers (1 through 22) or the letters X and Y.
My Chromosome Painting has two copies of the X chromosome because I’m female. The picture on the left shows the genome of a biological male, who has one copy of the X chromosome and one copy of the Y chromosome. Y chromosomes aren’t shown in Chromosome Paintings.
In the Chromosome Painting, gray regions in chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21, and 22 represent parts of the genome where 23andMe doesn’t test any markers because the DNA sequences in those regions are repetitive and hard to measure.
<h6>Exploring your genetic ancestry</h6>
In your Chromosome Painting, your genome is “painted” with colors representing up to 31 different ancestries. You can hover over or click on the different ancestries in your Chromosome Painting to learn where they’re found in your genome.
The 31 Ancestry Composition populations are organized in a hierarchy, which reflects the genetic structure of global populations. For example, Britain and Ireland are part of Northwest Europe, which is part of Europe. To see this hierarchy in action, take a closer look at my Chromosome Painting:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24851 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-880x663.png" alt="" width="880" height="663" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-880x663.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-300x226.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-768x579.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-1024x771.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-1180x889.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting.png 1476w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
My Chromosome Painting shows genetic ancestry from several different fine-resolution populations like British &amp; Irish, French &amp; German, and Ashkenazi Jewish. But these are all sub-categories of European. When I click “European” on the right hand sidebar, my whole genome is colored in “European blue”:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24852 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-880x663.png" alt="" width="880" height="663" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-880x663.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-300x226.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-768x579.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-1024x771.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-1180x889.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european.png 1476w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
What can you do with your own high-resolution picture of the Ancestry Composition on each of your chromosomes? You can click on the different populations to understand how they relate to each other and where they’re found in your genome. You also can talk to family members (or connect with them on 23andMe) to learn which branches of your family contributed which parts of your genetic ancestry.
<h6>One segment, two segment, red segment, blue segment</h6>
The colors in your Chromosome Painting tell you about your Ancestry Composition, but you can learn even more by looking at the number and length of the DNA segments assigned to each ancestry. Everyone inherits half of their DNA from their mother and half from their father. When DNA is passed from parents to their children, the two chromosomes in each pair are randomly shuffled together in a process called recombination.
This process breaks up long segments of a single ancestry into shorter segments. Sometimes very short segments of ancestry are lost during recombination and don’t get passed to the next generation. This is why ancestry from your distant ancestors only shows up in a few short segments of your genome, if at all.
The technical term for the genetic mixing of previously separate populations is admixture. If you have different DNA segments painted with different colors in your Chromosome Painting, those are evidence of admixture in your genetic history. Take a look at these two Chromosome Paintings side by side:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24853 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-880x498.png" alt="" width="880" height="498" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-880x498.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-300x170.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-768x435.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-1024x579.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-1180x668.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white.png 1944w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
<h6>Every Chromosome Painting Tells a Story</h6>
These Chromosome Paintings show very different genetic histories, and not just because of their Ancestry Compositions! Even if we ignore the colors themselves, the two pictures are pretty different. The long, unbroken stretches of color on the left are evidence of recent admixture, while the short segments of different ancestries on the right suggest admixture many generations ago.
My Chromosome Painting is the one on the left. I have one grandparent whose family came from Germany, one grandparent whose family came from Ireland, and two Ashkenazi Jewish grandparents. In other words, my ancestors from different European populations just started mixing together in the past two or three generations. The Chromosome painting on the right shows someone who identifies as Latino (Antonio, an Engineer at 23andMe), whose Native American (yellow), African (pink) and European (blue) ancestors probably started mixing with each other many generations ago.
How can you use this information to understand your own Chromosome Painting? In general, if your most recent ancestor from a population was very recent, you will have segments of that ancestry on more chromosomes, and those segments will be longer, than if your most recent ancestor was many generations ago.
<h6>Thanks, Mom and Dad!</h6>
If you have a biological parent or child who is also a 23andMe user, you can connect with them to improve the resolution of your Ancestry Composition results.
Connecting with a parent will also reorganize your Chromosome Painting so that the top chromosome in each pair is the one you inherited from your mother, and the bottom chromosome is the one you inherited from your father.
<h6>Connecting or not with a Parent</h6>
Even if you are not connected with either of your parents through 23andMe, you may still be able to learn a little bit about their ancestry by looking at your own Chromosome Painting:
<ul>
<li>If you are male, you inherited all of the ancestry painted on your X chromosome from your mother.</li>
<li>If you have the same ancestry painted in the same place on both copies of a chromosome, then you inherited the same ancestry from both of your parents in that region of your genome.</li>
<li>If you share a segment of DNA with a <a href="https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/">DNA Relative</a>, and you know whether you are connected to that relative on your maternal or your paternal side, then you inherited that segment of DNA (and its ancestry) from the same side of your family through which you’re connected to that relative.</li>
<li>If your parents come from different genetic backgrounds, then you may be able to guess which chromosomes you inherited from which of your parents. You can do this by by looking at the ancestries painted on each chromosome. For technical reasons, this will work even better if you are connected with a parent. That is because our computational algorithm will be able to phase your raw data with more accuracy.</li>
</ul>
<h6>A deeper dive: Confidence levels</h6>
If you’ve mastered the basic details of your Chromosome Painting and you’d like to explore at an even more advanced level, click on “Change confidence level” and move the slider that appears above your Chromosome Painting. You can explore the different views of your Chromosome Painting at different confidence levels. You can also compare those different views to each other.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24854 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-880x218.png" alt="" width="880" height="218" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-880x218.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-300x74.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-768x190.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1.png 964w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
The algorithm we use to calculate your Ancestry Composition analyzes one small piece of your DNA at a time. For each piece of your DNA, we calculate the probability of that piece coming from 31 different populations. The confidence slider on the Chromosome Painting allows you to explore our estimates of your genetic ancestry at different probability cutoffs. For example, if a segment of your DNA has a 55 percent chance of being Japanese, then that segment will be painted as Japanese at the 50 percent confidence level. But at the 60 to 90 percent level it will be painted with a more broad ancestry (either Broadly East Asian, Broadly East Asian &amp; Native American, or Unassigned).
<h6>Putting it all together</h6>
Everyone’s genetic history is a little different. Every Chromosome Painting has a different story to tell too. This means that you may learn more about your ancestry from some of the suggestions in this blog post than from others. Just remember – like every true work of art, your Chromosome Painting isn’t something to be understood.  It&#8217;s something to be explored.
For a detailed technical explanation of how we calculate your ancestry and paint your chromosomes, check out the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/">Ancestry Composition Guide</a>.

DNA Relatives — Page 6