October 27, 2022, was a gorgeous, sunny fall day in Colorado. After living in Ohio all our lives, my husband Ryan and I moved to Colorado in June of that year to be closer to our oldest daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren. I worked from home, and my workday was progressing uneventfully. Ryan was in Florida, helping his mother recover after knee surgery, so I was home alone. After I finished my workday, I checked my personal email and noticed an email from Ancestry.com sitting in my inbox. The subject was “New AncestryDNA Feature: Parental Matches.” Thinking I had already found out everything I could about both sides of my family when I researched them a couple of years earlier, I was only mildly curious—but curious enough to log in to my Ancestry account and take a look.

One of the things my husband and I have always enjoyed is watching genealogy shows on TV. It seemed like everyone who had their ancestry traced discovered amazing things about their ancestors. There was almost always a bombshell story that had not been passed down, and it was always very moving to see the reaction of the person whose lineage had been researched as they first heard a story that impacted the trajectory of their ancestor’s life. So around 2016, I joined Ancestry to research my family tree. I traced my ancestry on both my mother’s and father’s sides, although I was more interested in my father’s side because I knew so little about that part of my family. I also took a DNA test for fun, just to see if there were any interesting ethnicities in my ancestry that I didn’t know about. When I got the results back, there was nothing very interesting—it showed German and English ethnicity with a tiny percentage of Scandinavian. The percentage of English ethnicity seemed a little low, but there was enough that it didn’t seem out of line with who I knew my family to be. Now I know that ethnicity estimates are just that—estimates. In order to determine your ethnicity percentages, they compare your DNA to other people’s DNA in their databases. The estimates are fluid in that they change as more and more DNA is added to the database. That first DNA test revealed nothing exciting. I was surprised and disappointed but resigned to the fact that there weren’t any particularly compelling stories in my background, just simple, solid people. I don’t remember looking at my DNA matches. I knew who the living people were in my family, so why bother?

Fast forward to 2022, on that sunny fall day in my home office, what I didn’t realize was that several more years of people taking home DNA tests and being added to the database would have “shifted” my ethnicity percentage estimates in Ancestry’s system. After logging into my account, I clicked on “DNA Matches by Parent.” I was taken to a page with a section for my maternal matches and, below that, a section for my paternal matches. Within each section were three boxes with the headings “Last Names in Trees,” “Common Communities,” and “Ethnicity Inheritance.” I quickly skimmed the information on the maternal side—I recognized most of the last names and the ethnicity inheritance (mostly German). It made sense. I scrolled down to my paternal matches, and the first thing I noticed was the pie chart showing ethnicity—it was mostly German, with only 2% British ethnicity. That didn’t make any sense, as my father’s line descended directly from England.

Then I looked at the names in the box labeled “In the trees of your closest maternal matches, these last names are the most common.” While on my mother’s side I recognized seven of the ten surnames, I recognized none of the common last names on my father’s side. I was confused.

Looking back, I can see that as soon as I saw the paternal DNA matches and all the accompanying information about surnames and ethnicity that didn’t make sense, I immediately started going into shock. I went into overdrive, looking for anything in my paternal DNA matches that would connect me with the man I had believed was my father for the entire 60 years of my life; in other words, looking for the familiarity of what I had always known to be true about my identity.

At first, I thought Ancestry had made a mistake. There was a blurb at the bottom of the page saying they were beta testing this feature and asking for feedback. So I clicked on the link and sent a quick message saying I thought they had made a mistake (they never responded).

I returned to the information on the page and quickly began to realize Ancestry had not made a mistake because, on my mother’s side, everything—from the ten most common surnames among my maternal DNA matches, to ethnicity, to the last names of the individuals listed—made sense. Everything on my paternal side was foreign. There was nothing I recognized, and nothing made sense.

With another click, I could view a list of all the people who were DNA matches to me on my father’s side. The closest paternal DNA match was listed as a first cousin. I had never heard of her. Luckily, she had built a small family tree and made it public, so I could see the names of the people in her tree. The surname of her paternal grandfather was familiar—it was the surname of family friends. I vaguely remembered going to their house as a child when our parents played cards. I remembered their youngest son, Mike, who was four years older than me. When I clicked on the person in the tree with that last name, it pulled up his birth and death information. He had died in the small town in Ohio where I grew up. I immediately knew something was up. The next person on the list, listed as a first cousin, was also someone I didn’t know, but I recognized the last name as a common surname in my hometown.

I don’t know how long I sat there in my office looking at this information. For the next year, there would be chunks of time that were a blur. The worst part that day was that because my husband was across the country, I couldn’t reach him immediately, even by phone. His mom’s surgery had been the day before; she became very sick from the pain medication and had to stay an extra night in the hospital, so I knew from talking to him earlier that he had his hands full.

The next thing I remember is waiting until after dinner and calling my oldest daughter, Jennifer. I had no answers, but I needed to talk to someone. She was wonderfully supportive, and I will always remember her humorous first response: “Grandma? The woman who was content to sit in front of the TV and watch reruns of game shows from the ’70s?” Even more inconceivable than thinking about our parents as passionate, vibrant, multidimensional (and, dare I say it, sexual) beings is thinking that way about our grandparents, especially because most of us don’t really know them until they are in their later stages of life.

I became obsessed with finding information that made sense. I ran a search for my father’s last name - zero DNA matches. I started thinking of anyone who should have been related to me through my father but had different last names because of marriage—cousins, aunts, uncles—one by one I entered their names in the search bar… no matches. That didn’t conclusively prove I wasn’t related to anyone on my father’s side, but it did mean that if any of those people had taken DNA tests, they weren’t DNA matches to me. It also meant they weren’t listed in any family trees of the people who were matches to me.

The next morning, I tried to work, but I couldn’t concentrate, so I took the rest of the day off. I wanted answers, and I wanted them immediately. I sank further into shock and confusion. I searched online for information on my suspected half-brother, Mike, and I got lucky. I was able to find his snail mail address. I was pretty sure I had the right person because, along with his current address, prior addresses were also listed that placed him in northwest Ohio, where we both grew up.

What could I remember about Mike’s family? First, a funny story: I had a crush on Mike. The summer before I left for college, I ran into him at a dive bar in a neighboring town. We shared a couple of fast dances, but that was it—no slow dances or hugs or anything else, thankfully! I remembered where their house was in town. I knew our families were friends, yet we stopped going over to their house when I was fairly young. I remember Mike’s older sister, Marcia, breezing through the house one time when I was there. I remember her as happy and vivacious. To me, she was a cool older girl to look up to, and I was enamored with her. I thought they had older siblings too, but I couldn’t remember anything about them. I specifically remember walking into their kitchen one time when my mom and I went to their house. Their dad, Walt, and his wife were leaning against the kitchen cabinets, Walt with a cigarette in his hand, he and his wife both smiling. What was his wife’s name? It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t remember. I started looking up their obituaries. I found Walt’s obituary and was surprised to see he died only two months after my mom died in 2007. His wife’s name was Dottie. Yes, I remember now, Walt and Dottie. From the obituary, I learned Walt and Dottie had five children altogether… holy cow. I potentially had five more siblings.

So I wrote Mike a letter. I didn’t see any point in hinting around, so I awkwardly told him what my suspicions were. Looking back, I can see that the logical part of my brain was pretty shut down, but I did my best. It took me a lot longer to write it than it usually did to write letters. I struggled to concentrate and focus. I went over it again and again, surprised at all the grammatical errors I was making.

It is amusing to me now that I included a paragraph that started, “I am gainfully employed and happily married.” I went on to explain a little about my family and work life. I was literally thinking that I had to convince him that I was a productive member of society and an intelligent, rational person so he would take me seriously. I thought that by doing that, I would be able to illustrate that I wasn’t just a crazy person with a conspiracy theory. Afterward, I realized that no matter how cogent a letter I was able to compose, I was probably going to sound like a crazy person with a conspiracy theory! To me, this illustrates the frame of mind I was in at the time, because now that the executive functioning part of my brain is back online, I can see that including that information would not necessarily prove to anyone that I was sane and reasonable!

I also included information about being an artist, which is also funny to me as I think about it now. As I wrote the letter, I already knew the truth. It was clear to me that Walt  was my father. I wouldn’t have guessed in a million billion years that this could be a possibility, and I had no prior knowledge or even hints that this was true. But I knew DNA didn’t lie, and I could not deny what it was telling me. No one else among the people I knew to be my family was interested or involved in art, so I always wondered which ancestor (or ancestors) I received my artistic ability from. I was looking for evidence. I was looking for others to say, yes, I paint; yes, I’m an artist; yes, my brother, sister, aunt, uncle, etc., was an artist.

I drove the letter to the post office and mailed it that day, Friday, October 28, 2022. That evening, I called my daughter Kelly, who had just finished a PhD in Creative Writing and was in the process of moving to Florida with her fiancée. “Could it be a mistake?” she gently asked me. I said that if all my paternal DNA matches were people from someplace my mother had never been (like Utah, for example), I might think it was possible that a mistake had been made. But how could it be a mistake when my closest DNA match had family with the surname of family friends who were born and died in the same small town in Ohio where I was born?

Some people who have a DNA discovery decide to proceed slowly and with caution. I moved forward with the speed of a freight train. I wanted answers, and I wanted them immediately. I knew that I had a very basic right to know who I am and where I came from. That took precedence over worrying about how this information would affect others. It was fortunate, in one way, that my mother, Martha; my birth certificate father, Earl; my suspected biological father, Walt; and his wife, Dottie, were all deceased. That would have given me some pause in terms of worrying about the effect of this information on other people. Most importantly, I know I would have worried about the effect it would have had on Dottie. My birth certificate father, Earl had passed away when I was 3, so he had been gone for 56 years by that time. I know that for many this happens to, whose birth certificate fathers are still alive and with whom they’ve had a relationship their entire lives, there is an added layer of complexity in thinking about how this will affect them. On top of that is the grief that comes with finding out that person is not their biological father and wondering how that will affect their relationship. I was fortunate that, while I understood I had an attachment to my birth certificate father and must have grieved when he died, I don’t remember anything from that time. But Dottie? She was innocent here, as I was. If she had still been alive when I came across this information, my thought process would have been completely different. I can’t say what I ultimately would have done in that situation. It would have been something I would have had to think through. It’s not that I didn’t care about the effect this could have on my suspected half-siblings. It’s not that I didn’t understand that I was crashing into their world and that this information, if true, would also be a shock that could jar their identities and possibly how they viewed their father. But what I understood is that it wasn’t the situation itself causing this—it was how they thought about me and the situation that would shape their emotions. That was their responsibility, not mine. I believed—and after reflection, I still believe—that the core issue was that I had a right to know my biological origins.

After only a few days, I got an email from Mike. Another DNA test was taken, and on December 1, 2022, the results were in—Walt is my biological father. Half my family evaporated and was replaced with an unfamiliar one. My identity was shattered. I didn’t get to have a relationship with either of my fathers, but in a way, both of them are my fathers. Do I feel like I have two fathers or no father? It depends on the day.