1. German Background
My friend’s mother recently told her that she thinks her dad is not her biological father. Her mother was in the military and slept with a man in Germany during the 1990s when she was posted overseas. A month later she had come home and slept with her father.
It was unclear who her biological father was since the timelines were so close. She decided to get an ancestry kit to get to the bottom of things. The results shook her to her core. Her father was not her biological father.
She decided that she wanted to find her biological father even though it was against her mother’s wishes. Her mother wants to keep everything under wraps so her father won’t find out as that could ruin the marriage and the family.
Her younger siblings also don’t want her to find her biological father because they fear it could tear apart the family. However, she’s determined to find her father because she’s curious to see if she has any other siblings or relatives out there.
2. Was There An Affair
I recently received some life changing news. My dad was not my biological father. My dad died a couple of months ago and it really got me thinking about family and how important it was. I decided to take a DNA test to learn more about the possibilities of other relatives.
I found out from my mom that my dad knew he wasn’t my biological father and he never wanted me to find out. I never got the chance to tell him that I wouldn’t have cared and that he would forever and always be my dad.
My mother told me she doesn’t even know the name of my biological father since it was a one night stand that occurred 30+ years ago.
A month after the one night stand she met my dad. I am conflicted about what I should do next. 23 & Me says i have three close family connections all from my father’s side.
I wonder if I should check the box and allow them to contact me.
3. No Going Back
I wanted to try 23 & Me to learn more about how I descended from, not to find any long lost relatives or anything like that. I already knew that the father who raised me wasn’t my biological father since I was a teenager.
I always thought I was adopted because I bore no resemblance to anyone in the family. My mother is full Irish and my dad is Caucasian but I look ambiguous.
Dark skin and hair with green eyes I was an outlier in the family. I learned the truth from my mom when I was a teenager but when I got the report back it said I was mostly of European descent.
It showed I had some cousins but I didn’t have interest in contacting them so I didn’t bother. One day I got a message that I had a new close connection: a half-sister.
I was curious and wanted to know more so I decided to message her. I didn’t tell anyone else that I had reached out as I eagerly awaited a reply.
She never replied to me and it made me kind of sad, but I figured that it may have shook up her family life if she decided to reply to me. Once you pull back the curtain things are never the same.
A second cousin appeared a few months later and she was labeled as a first cousin of my half-sister which was puzzling. How could she be my second cousin and my half-sister’s first cousin?
She (my second cousin) reached out because she thought I may be able to answer her questions but I told her that I have no information for her. I let her know that I reached out to my half-sister but she never replied.
She had also reached out to her first cousin and they communicated for a little while until I was mentioned. As soon as I was brought up she stopped talking to her.
I soon was able to piece together that the three of us had a connection. We all were connected through my half-sister’s maternal bloodline. Since I knew my mother was my biological mother I thought how was this possible.
I had a sudden realization. My half-sister was actually my aunt. She was my biological father’s sister. Since we shared 25% of our DNA it was possible that she was my aunt.
I reached out to her again and told her that I thought she may be my aunt. I told her about my birthday, where I was born and that if she had a brother that he would be my biological father.
She replied to me in a jiffy. My paternal grandfather had passed away a few years ago and when she saw the half-sibling connection she thought her father had a child that had been a secret all these years.
I’m much younger than her and her siblings. She told me she didn’t reply to me because she knew that it would hurt her mother and her siblings.
I understood the position she was in. However, she surprised me when she said that maybe it’s time I meet the rest of the family.
That next weekend I met the rest of my half-siblings and their mother. All of them were super warm and supportive which is something I didn’t expect.
It turns out my father had carried a picture of me in his wallet that he took with him everywhere and even started a college fund for me that he was never able to give me since he passed so suddenly. Maybe he did actually care about me.
It was incredible to meet people who actually looked like me. I also looked just like my paternal grandmother which we all found astounding.
The 23AndMe kit changed my life for the better and I can’t be more grateful.
4. Heartless
My aunt’s blood type is AB+ which is only present in about 4% of the population. She’s super proud of her unique blood type and the fact that she is a universal recipient.
However, my grandparents have the blood types B and O which makes it impossible for her to be blood type AB+ if they are both her biological grandparents.
She was their caretaker later in their lives all the way up until the point of their deaths. Since she was so close with them and had a special bond, I just can’t tell her and shatter her world. I do really wonder about who her actual parents are. Could she be adopted?
5. Support Through Tough Times
Roughly two years ago one of co-worker’s husbands bought her a 23AndMe kit as a birthday gift. Unfortunately, he died a few weeks later in a tragic car accident.
A couple of weeks later she got her results back and found that she had two other daughters with a woman who wasn’t her mom.
She was in shock and if circumstances were normal she may not have reached out. But because she had just recently lost her husband she was feeling lonely and vulnerable and decided to reach out.
Not only did her two half-sisters respond but they ended up becoming quite close which helped get her through the difficult ordeal of losing her husband. They should really be in a 23AndMe commercial.
6. Hit By Trauma
Mine and my girlfriend’s life have just been absolutely rocked. A few hours ago we just got the results of a shocking DNA test. To give you some background information, my girlfriend (I’ll just call her Jenna) and I have been dating for almost a year and a half and our relationship has been absolutely amazing.
We both grew up in the same hometown but we never met until we were in college when a mutual friend of ours introduced us to each other. Last Thanksgiving Jenna decided to stay at my house for the holidays.
I had also decided to not go home to see my family for the holidays in order to spend more time with Jenna. My roommates had left to spend time with their families so we would have the whole house to ourselves.
There was a Black Friday special on 23AndMe kits and Jenna decided to buy one for each of us. We also both happened to have been conceived through IVF via donors.
We both had fathers who were infertile so our parents had no choice but to do IVF via donors. We were looking to find out who our biological fathers were as we wanted to see where we came from. After a few weeks had passed it was finally time to check our results.
Jenna and I decide to go through our results together and we open our laptops excited to learn more about our biological fathers. Everything seemed totally normal as we checked our ancestry and health reports. I was 7% Native American which was super cool.
Everything was fine until we moved to the DNA relatives portion. Jenna squeezes my arm and says “Hopefully we find our biological fathers”. I open mine up and I see Jenna 35% DNA shared, half-sister.
I did a double take and checked again and the last name matched Jenna. I was flabbergasted. Jenna doesn’t believe me and tells me to cut it out and to stop joking.
I sit there frozen. I’m absolutely silent. I stare at my screen not wanting to believe what’s in front of me. I grab her laptop and check her DNA relatives section. I see my name there as a 35% DNA shared, half-brother.
Then it finally hits me. I’ve been making out with my half-sister. I’m now in a state of shock and am on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. Why did this have to happen to us? Our relationship is surely ruined.
It must be that our mothers were fertilized by the same seed. Growing up in the same town maybe it shouldn’t be such a huge shock. We are from a small town and there were only a few fertility doctors.
I looked over at Sarah and she looked completely disgusted. I was practically speechless and just sat there stunned in silence.
Even though I loved Jenna the realization hit me that our whole relationship was incest. I couldn’t shake the thought of it. Both of us feel horrible. We then promptly broke up and haven’t really talked since. I really thought she was going to be my soulmate.
7. Seed Spreading
One day out of the blue my wife’s sister was reached out to by someone via Facebook who claimed that they shared a father. Funnily enough she had reached out to her on Mother’s Day. We started to comb through her Facebook profile to gather more details.
They truly did look like they were sisters. We found out that my wife’s father had been donating his seed to BYU. He’s a Mormon and a huge supporter of the university and wanted to have his seed spread by the university.
His wife just found that he’d been doing this. He has been donating for over 20+ years and has fathered a number of other children who are half-siblings to my wife and wife’s sister.
All this time he hasn’t been a present father or husband and my wife’s family could never figure out why. He had been spending all his free time with his “other children” while completely ignoring his actual children and wife. I’m not surprised as this guy was always a creep.
8. A Terrible Nightmare
I decided to take my sister out to dinner because I had to find out the truth. The results were in and I knew that something had gone on with a relative of ours and I needed to know the truth immediately because her daughter was going to find out soon.
I manage my niece’s 23AndMe account and she has been constantly hounding me for updates since it has been nearly 2 months since she’s sent her saliva sample in.
The results that came in made my jaw drop. It turns out my brother is the biological father of my niece. This is weird because I don’t even have a brother that I know of.
I confronted my parents and they told me that when they were teenagers they had given up a son for adoption since they were too young to care for him properly.
When he had turned 21 he had looked up and found my parents and came to our house to look for them. My parents weren’t home but my sister was.
My sister recognized him as they both went to the same college. He was a little nervous so he didn’t tell her why he had stopped by the house. He took my sister’s number and left.
Shortly after he asked her out on a date. My sister accepted and they went on a couple of dates but things quickly fizzled out. However, shortly after they stopped dating my sister had gotten pregnant.
She called him to tell him the news and he was mortified. He sent her some money to stop the pregnancy and never reached out to her again.
My sister just recently found out her biological brother had tricked her and felt absolutely disgusted. My parents don’t know about the situation and I don’t know if my sister is going to tell them.
We finally decided to tell them together. The fact that their son is the father of their daughter’s child will rock the family to its core. This is certain to be an absolute nightmare. I hope my niece is going to be ok.
9. The Truth Always Comes To The Light
My aunt had a child when she was a teenager and gave up the baby for adoption as she was too young to take care of her soon. Fast forward twenty years and my aunt and her son have gotten in touch and reconnected. She even told him about who his biological father is.
After he met his biological father they decided to have a DNA test run in order to compare their family history and lineage. They found out that he wasn’t really the father. They didn’t share any DNA in common.
There was a lot of commotion in my family because my aunt’s son felt deceived and hurt. He was building a relationship with someone he thought was his biological father but it turned out to be just a random guy.
The worst part is that my aunt is refusing to talk about the subject at all. She won’t tell him why she lied about his father and why he can’t know his real identity. I feel really bad because I don’t know if he’ll ever get closure.
10. Side Family
My grandma’s father abandoned her mother when her youngest brother was only 3 years old. He just picked up one day and left his wife and his four children alone in their home in Ontario, Canada.
All that was known is that he was heading west. Other than that we had no idea where he was going. My grandma is now 90 years old and she decided to take a DNA test about a year ago.
She found out her father ended up marrying someone new in British Columbia after he had headed west. He hadn’t even divorced her mother which meant that the wedding was technically illegal.
On top of this it turns out that he had four children with her. This piece of scum had left his family and went clear across the country to start another one.
He had named one of his new sons Gordon which is coincidentally the same name as my grandma’s brother. I guess he must’ve liked the name if he gave it to two different sons who were in two different families.
I just hope he treats the new Gordon better than he did the original.
11. Alive and Kicking
My mom just recently found out that her biological father was alive and well living in Minnesota. This was obviously very surprising as my mom had spent her fifty years on Earth believing that grandpa was her biological father.
My grandmother is saying that the tests are fraudulent and you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. We told grandma that DNA testing is very reliable and is used extensively by governments and organizations throughout the world.
A couple of weeks go by and we decide to go to Minnesota so we can meet him. Turns out he’s a super nice guy who never got married or had any children. The year I was born just happened to be the year I retired.
He also was a pilot which funnily enough is exactly the line of work that I am in. He’s so thrilled to find out he has a daughter. He has mentioned that it’s lonely in his old age without any wife, kids or grandkids to keep him company.
I’m so glad my mom took the plunge and decided to find other members of our family.
12. Grandma Did What
I felt very pleased with myself when I decided to buy my mother-in-law’s side of the family a 23andMe kit. I thought it would be nice for them to learn more about their family heritage and ancestry.
We ended up learning that my wife’s grandmother had an affair which meant that my wife’s mother’s biological father was not the father who raised her.
Christmas dinner is going to be absolutely crazy this year. What I thought would be a nice gesture may end up ripping apart a family. Maybe we should all just stop buying 23andMe kits.
13. A Nasty Surprise
This is one of the most interesting 23AndMe stories I had ever heard. I met this guy and he told me found out he was adopted after he took a DNA test a few years ago.
He was shocked when he found out that he had 10 half-siblings from his dad’s side scattered all across the country.
He reached out to them to learn more and the news couldn’t have been worse. They told him that their biological father is a serial criminal who was wanted in a number of states and was still on the loose.
He was absolutely horrified and decided this was a secret he wasn’t too keen on sharing with anyone.
14. Mom or Sister
I went my whole life without knowing that my grandparents had adopted me. There was never any reason to think that I wasn’t their kid. I looked at old photographs of my mom (my actual grandmother) and we looked exactly alike.
I never in a million years would’ve guessed that she wasn’t my grandmother.
One day while sitting in my college dorm my friends and I thought it would be cool to order DNA kits and try them out. The results left me floored. My older sister was not my older sister but instead my biological mother.
She had gotten pregnant at 14 and wasn’t going to be able to take care of me. My grandparents wanted her and me to have a normal life so they adopted me and decided to raise me as their own.
15. A Shocking Twist
I had always known I was adopted. My birth mother was really young and wouldn’t be able to provide a safe and loving home for me so she put me up for adoption when I was born. One thing she never told them was who my birth father was.
I love my parents wholeheartedly and couldn’t have asked for a better life, but I still wanted to see where I came from.
Maybe it would've been better if I wasn’t so curious. You’re never going to guess who my biological father was, it was my adopted dad. He had cheated on my adoptive mom with my biological mom and then decided to adopt me because they (adoptive mom and him) were having trouble getting pregnant.
I don’t know if my mom will ever forgive my dad.
16. Grandpa The Sinner
I have a friend whose grandfather is holier than thou and is a strict and devout Christian. The news I learned about him was so unexpected that I nearly spat out my drink. He had four children outside of his marriage with three different neighbors. Neither I or my friend could believe it.
The youngest child’s mother was only 17 years old and this occurred the year grandpa died which would make him 78. Everyone was totally blindsided.
There may even be more kids out there that we don’t know about. Unfortunately, with grandpa’s untimely passing we may never about the rest of our family.
17. Seed Donors
Our family recently found that two of our family members have been seed donors for some time. One of them has a whopping 40+ children. He is currently unmarried and has had his most recent relationship end because his girlfriend found out and didn’t feel comfortable marrying someone who had that many children.
What really upset her is that he continued to donate even after he wasn’t a broke college student. She couldn’t wrap her head around why he continued to donate even after he got older.
The other family member only has one donor child. He’s married and has a family. Even though his wife was unhappy when she found out it was over 30 years ago and he only had one child.
18. Closed Doors
One of my wife’s cousins is adopted. Recently he was able to not only find his biological parents but also multiple siblings who were a 100% DNA match with him. He was an only child so the only thing he longed for was to find family and especially siblings. He was super excited to reach out and connect with them.
However, he didn’t get the response he was expecting. They told him not to contact them and they wanted nothing to do with him.
He discovered that he was born shortly after his biological parents divorced and because no one wanted him (including his siblings) he was put up for adoption. He’s absolutely heartbroken as he had always wished for a big family with tons of brothers and sisters.
He’s slowly processing things and realizing that blood doesn’t make someone your family. This makes me happy as we all love him very much and want him to realize that we’re his family.
19. Made For TV
I was adopted and always wanted to learn about the rest of my family. Through AncestryDNA I was able to find my biological brother. Not only did we go to the same college but we also did the same minor and major. In addition, we had a lot of other similarities.
I also met my birth mother and birth father and many of my other relatives. The local TV news network got wind of our story and decided to run a story on us.
AncestryDNA heard about this and decided to send us on an all expenses paid trip to Benin, Africa in order to meet the rest of the extended family.
When we met my birth father’s extended family my grandfather decided to buy everyone in the family a DNA test kit. My brother’s wife took the test and she found out that her dad wasn’t her biological dad.
Her mom confessed to her that she had a one night stand in Paris on vacation and had told no one about it. Everyone’s feelings have been hurt by the revelation but they’re looking to go to therapy to work through it because they want to keep the family together.
20. Surprising Name Change
My family and I had always believed that our last name had come from Ellis Island. The real story is that my great grandfather changed his name when he married my great grandmother because he wanted to cover up the fact that he left his other wife and his eight children.
This means that my grandfather has just discovered that he has eight half-siblings and we’re just finding this out now. It’s been over 80 years since my great grandfather’s deception and many of his initial 8 children have passed away.
However, it is cool to learn about all the new cousins I now have. Turns out one of them lives about an hour away and we’re going to meet up to have lunch soon.
21. Lots of Donations
My aunt’s husband was unable to have kids because he had undergone a cancer treatment in his younger days that left him infertile. When they decided to start a family they had agreed upon using a seed donor in order to get my aunt pregnant. The same donor was used for both of my cousins. Let’s call them D & C.
My cousin D and I both decided to use 23AndMe to see if we had any other long lost family out there. When looking at D’s results I showed up as a first or second cousin which made total sense.
But we also found that there were some people labeled as “first cousins or closer”. This meant that these people were more closely related to her than even I was.
This meant that they may have even been siblings.
D decided that she wanted to learn more. She initially thought that she may have a few half-siblings out there. She did not expect to find that she had hundreds of half-siblings!
The donor that her mother used was extremely popular in the 1990s and the donor company proceeded to use that donor to impregnate hundreds of women.
There are so many siblings that there is even a Facebook group that has been created for this donor’s children. Some of the siblings even have meetups from time to time. They eventually found their biological father. Turns out he lives in Switzerland with a family of his own.
22. Away In Korea
While my grandfather was deployed for the Korean War my grandmother had an affair back home in the states. Since my grandfather was deployed for multiple years, my grandmother was able to have the baby girl and put her up for adoption before my grandfather had even returned from the war.
After he came back they wound up having five sons together.
None of them were aware that they had an older sister. One of my dad’s cousins matched with my newly found aunt on Ancestry.com. We found out that she only lives about an hour away.
Since then she has begun to visit to get to know her brothers better. Unfortunately, her biological mother (my grandmother) passed away a few years ago and they’ll never have the opportunity to meet.
23. Building New Bonds
My father abandoned my mother and I when I was little and I have absolutely no relationship with him. I recently took the 23AndMe test to see if I had any other family out there. It turns out that the father who had left us wasn’t my biological father.
Fast forward a year and I get a message from a close connection on 23AndMe. A sister on my dad’s side had reached out to me.
Through her I was able to learn about my brother and my biological dad. I’ve met them a couple of times and we are starting to form a relationship.
They're actually coming over in a couple of hours to meet my wife and daughter. They’ve never met my father so I’m super excited for them to meet.
23AndMe absolutely changed my life. I already had a wonderful family but it has helped me connect with people I never would’ve met.
24. Just for Funsies
My best friend since birth went his whole life believing that he was ¾ white and ¼ Japanese. A couple of years ago he decided to take a DNA test to see if he was at risk for any hereditary diseases.
The results said he is 0% Japanese and a whopping 47% Native American. His mother is a chemistry professor who had actually cheated on his dad with her old lab partner.
Her lab partner moved back to the US (we live in England) before she could ever tell him that she was pregnant with their child.
This caused his parents to get a divorce all these years later. He no longer speaks to his mother but is still close with the father who raised him. None of his Japanese relatives on his dad’s side know.
His paternal great grandmother would always remark how much he looked like his father when he was young. Keeping the secret away from them was always a challenge.
He eventually found his biological father in the states who hasn’t had any other children and has since married another man. With no other kids he was super excited to find out he had a son.
My friend has also learned much more about his Native American roots and has become an official member of the tribe.
He also goes out to the states and spends summer with them. I’ve been watching this saga unfold from the sidelines and it has been crazy to say the least.
25. Girl Next Door
My best friend and I met when we were little kids and she just happened to be my next door neighbor. This meant that we were inseparable and we experienced all of life’s big moments together: our first kiss, prom, and graduating high school.
Even though kids would sometimes tease us for being so close we didn’t care. We supported each other through thick and thin always making sure to attend each other's sports games and activities.
One weekend after graduation we hooked up accidentally and ended up starting a relationship. Both of us were staying in the area for college so it was perfect we could continue to see each other.
A couple of years later we decided to try a DNA test since we’d never done one before. We would’ve never guessed what was coming next. She was my half-sister on my dad’s side. Turns out her mom and my dad had an affair back in the day and she had gotten pregnant.
Now both our parents are in the midst of nasty divorces and things between us haven’t been the same since.
26. The Day After Thanksgiving
Who doesn’t love Black Friday? It means the holidays are here and there are always amazing deals. I was looking to get a new blender when I stumbled upon an ad for Ancestry.com
I had never done a test like this before so I decided to purchase one. My mom had died over a decade ago and my dad passed during the beginning of the pandemic. With no other siblings I was interested in seeing if I had any other family out there.
I was shocked when I received the test results. Someone in a neighboring state was my biological father. I wasn’t sure what I should do. But after a few days I decided I wanted to contact him.
What should I say? Would he even want to know me? All these questions raced through my head. I ended up calling him and found out that he was my mom’s boyfriend before she had met my father. I had no idea and my biological father had no idea that his then girlfriend had gotten pregnant. I wonder what type of conversations are going on in heaven!
