Posts Tagged ‘secret daughter’

Genetic Testing: Miracles and Science

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014

An adoptee twice rejected by her first mother turns to genetic testing for information and discovers a whole new family. 

It has been 25 years since I found my birth mother. She has rejected me two times since. My search began in California in 1986 when I was in my early twenties. I hired a private investigator and made use of the “non-identifying information” a compassionate social worker had provided. The investigator made the initial contact. It was a disaster; my birth mother did not want to be found.

Apparently my birth had been a frightening chapter in her life and one she wanted to keep closed. Imagine a pregnant eighteen-year-old girl in prison during the dawn of the free love movement, giving birth while incarcerated, not to mention in an era that stigmatized out-of-wedlock pregnancy. She had no desire to revisit her troubled youth through meeting me, and, the hardest part, no curiosity or desire to know who I was.  

I cried. I felt awful, guilty even.

It took months to work through my emotions over this second rejection, but I finally wrote to her. She responded with a letter that expressed her firm wish to draw a line that separated her from her past. Our only other communication was through two more letters over the years that followed. They met with the same result. Time seemed to have no effect on her wounds.  To this day I’ve never met her, nor spoken to her on the phone.  

I know I can’t control how she feels. I can only control my own reaction. I admit it hurts, but I’m not the type to kick something around forever.  Thankfully, my life is full of other moments. Great moments, especially those surrounding the births of my two sons and the years spent raising them. 

As the years have ticked by though, I increasingly wondered about my birth father. My birth mother was the only person who knew his identity and she was unwilling to divulge that information.

I made a rogue attempt to use social media to locate him. My Facebook page plea included the date and place of my birth, along with several photos of me throughout the years. I waited.  Several weeks went by and there was no shortage of shares. Like a cheesy 80’s shampoo commercial, I told two friends and they told two friends, and so on, and so on. 

The result: nothing. In the end, I surmised that my birth mother never told him that she was pregnant. How do you find someone who has no idea that you exist?

After that failed social media experiment, I took a break from finding him, until gnawing questions about my health history prompted me to try genetic testing. 

Thank you, science and technology. I spit in a test tube, waited a few weeks, and 23andMe (a genetic testing company named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell) gave me a genetically “clean” bill of health. The report explained that they detected no mutations or gene variants that would indicate serious inherited conditions, only a couple of genes indicating an elevated risk for non-life threatening conditions such as psoriasis and restless leg syndrome. 

This was before 23andMe suspended their health-related genetic testing to comply with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s directive. 

After I received the health results, I played around with the “Ancestry Composition” section of the site. I was fascinated to find out that I was mostly British and Irish, which was at least partially similar to my adoptive parents’ British and German ancestry. Given my propensity for arguing, raising my voice in exciting situations, and talking with my hands, I figured there would be a bit of Italian in me. Nope. I was enchanted anyway with the idea of being British and Irish, and fantasized I was related to Bono. 

Initially, I never thought to look at the “DNA Relatives” section of the site. I already knew who my biological mother was, and I knew she hadn’t had other children. As for my birth father, I figured he wouldn’t be looking for me, and given his age (early 70’s), he probably wasn’t spitting in a test tube to get in touch with his genes.

A few weeks after analyzing the health data, I received an email from 23andMe. It was a conduit email from a “potential relative.”

Hi – Through our shared DNA, 23andMe has identified us as relatives. Our predicted relationship is 4th Cousin, with a likely range of 3rd to 6th Cousin. Would you like to explore our relationship?

Fourth, maybe even a 6th cousin?  Whoop de doo. With no blood relatives that I actually knew, except for my own boys, a 4th cousin was too distant to rouse my curiosity.  Even if he were related to me on my paternal side, how would I know?  These potential matches typically request lineage information—a list of surnames to help piece together a family tree. I had no surnames to offer, so I ignored that first message. 

I received a few more requests, but they were all the same—distant cousins. The flurry of them, though, finally prompted me to check 23andMe’s “DNA Relatives” section. I could have shut off these notifications, but now I was a curious to see if there were other matches who hadn’t reached out yet.

On that page, 23andMe reported that I had 762 potential relatives. 762! What does one do with this kind of information?  Okay, maybe a lot of people care about distant cousins—it’s a way to find common ancestors and build your family tree—but I didn’t have a family tree.  I barely had a shrub. 

Then I saw it: “One Close Family.” What? Who? I clicked on it, but before 23andMe would reveal any details, a warning popped up. I had to confirm that I really wanted the information.  

23andMe asked for two layers of consent before it revealed a close family relationship. First, I was given the chance to turn off the “relative finder” function, which shows relations as close as second cousins. Once you’ve opted in, if 23andMe finds a close relative (closer than a second cousin), a pop-up warning explains how this “new” evidence of a close family relationship can be unexpected and even upsetting in some cases.  Upsetting? Been there. Of course I wanted to know! I clicked, then:

You may learn information about yourself that you do not anticipate.  Such information may provoke strong emotion.

Thanks 23andMe. Now I was scared. But I clicked “proceed” anyway. Then I saw it:  Male, Father, 50% shared, 23 segments

Father?  My biological father?!  23andMe had found my biological father! Boy, this was not some online game, yet I felt like I’d just won the lottery—50.0% shared, 23 segments.

I had to contact this guy. 23andMe required that initial contact be made through them. I could hardly think straight as I typed out a message to my father

Hi,

I am contacting you because 23andMe has identified you as a relative of mine because of our shared DNA. 23andMe has predicted, through our DNA “match,” that you are my biological father. You won’t recognize my name, because I was adopted and bear the name of my adoptive parents. However, my birth mother’s name is Margaret Michaels. I hope that the name Margaret Michaels is familiar to you, although it was 50 years ago and I understand that it was a difficult time for both of you. I hope that you will respond to my message and that you are interested in exploring our relationship. I look forward to hearing from you! Laureen Pittman 

(Original birth certificate reads: “Baby Girl Michaels”)

It hasn’t been an easy journey. At first, he thought our match was a mistake. My birth father—a self-proclaimed “old hippie”and artist who had fully immersed himself in the early 1960’s beatnik culture—had no recollection of his encounter with my birth mother. He doesn’t even remember her name, but since the geographic details and genetic facts all added up, our match could not be denied. 

He lives in another state and I have yet to make the journey to meet him.  We’re taking things slow and communicating through email. I’m grateful and amazed at his openness. He is telling me his truth, his story, and I am telling him mine. It’s really something to hear and be heard by a biological relative, and hard to explain how powerful that is to people who grew up with the ability to take that for granted. It feels like a miracle, like a whole new world opened up, with a little help from science.

Thank you for visiting Secret Sons & Daughters. In addition to stories, you can find valuable resourcesdiscover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page. Comments are always welcome. And we’d love to hear your story. Please subscribe and join our growing community.

Secrets in Review, Issue 3

Saturday, April 19th, 2014

Since Secret Sons & Daughters launched two months ago, we have enjoyed connecting with adoptees through their powerful stories, comments and through our social media.

It’s exciting to watch the voices of the adoptee community grow more candid and outspoken.

We are honored to have shared adoptees’ tales about searching, reunion, and what it was like for those in their 40’s or 50’s to discover that they’d been adopted. We’d also love to hear stories about what it was like to reunite with your biological father. Have you experienced rejection from your families, and if so, how have you dealt with this hardship? Are you an adoption rights advocate? What event inspired you to work for open access in your state? Maybe you’re an adoptee who’d prefer no contact at all— we’d like to share those stories, too.

We’re happy to offer you writing ideas and editorial assistance. To learn more—read our submission guidelines.

At Secret Sons & Daughters, we are passionate about helping adoptees connect, and hopeful that through our stories, we will create a groundswell of people to support original birth certificate access across the United States. Today, only eleven states (see Discover Your Rights) allow adoptees to have that access.

As noted in a New Era for Ohio Adoptees Began Today, Ohio is soon to be the most recent state to join that short list to provide original birth certificate access to all adult adoptees.

The adoptive story collective holds power. We’re seeing that stories beget more stories, from a writer who shared his search angel information to help another writer, to these comments that speak to what it’s like to share an experience—

Amy, and adoptee, enthusiastically related to Scott Baker’s inspirational reunion story when she said, “I am in tears! I have looked for years on and off, but have recently started searching with all my heart. I have an emptiness inside that I can’t explain compounded by the recent death of my adopted father. Please continue to share your story with as many groups as you can as it gives such extreme hope! I am in NY, and it seems when search angels hear that they seem to shy away a bit. Thank you so much for the wonderful story, you are very blessed!”

Another reader and adoptee, Mary, summarized the potential healing effect of writing her story after reading Paige Strickland’s interview on self-publishing a memoir: “I like what Paige said about ‘writing got a lot of “garbage” out of my system.’ That’s what is happening with me now as I just started my search at age 65. I didn’t realize how much I had suppressed, and how it has affected my life…I didn’t realize how many adoptees are out there, as I have never personally known anyone who admitted to being adopted…I felt odd about wanting to know who my family was, especially after the things I was told—like there was something wrong with me for being inquisitive. Thank you Paige, and all the [adoptees] and search angels out there— for freeing me and giving me the opportunity to know the real me.”

Many others supportively connected with our contributing authors. Here are the highlights from the past month:

An Adoptee Comes Full Circle When He Finds His Birth MotherAdoptee, Scott Baker

An Irish Adoptee Talks Adoption over Tea with Philomena LeeAdoptee, and Journalist with The Irish Independent, Catriona Palmer

An Ohio Adoptee Finds Her Way Home to HerselfAdoptee, Molly Murphy

An Iowa Adoptee’s Thoughts the Night Before He Meets His Birth MotherAdoptee, Dan Koerselman

Paige Strickland, Author of “Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity,” Speaks About Self-Publishing Her BookCofounder of Secret Sons & Daughters, Heather Katz, interviewed adoptee, Paige Strickland.

New York’s Spence-Chapin’s New Modern Family Center Offers Support for Adult AdopteesCofounder of Secret Sons & Daughters, Christine Koubek, spoke with adoptee, Misha Conaway, Outreach Manager, and Dana Stallard, the center’s Adoptee Services Coordinator about the center’s opening.

New Era for Ohio Adoptees Began TodayChristine also spoke with Ms. Betsie Norris, the executive director of Adoption Network Cleveland, and an adoptee whose father was partially responsible not only for Ohio’s sealed records practice, but also for its reversal many years later.

Coming up next are new late-discovery adoptee tales, and stories of secret daughters finding their strength through difficult reunions. In addition, Christine will share the highlights of her recent trip to San Francisco where she met a few adoptee tale writers and many others who are making a difference in the lives of adoptees at the American Adoption Congress Conference.

We’ve also reorganized our “News” section, which is now “Secret Talk.” Within it, you’ll find posts grouped under: Words of Wisdom, Legislation News, Secrets in Review, and Blog posts (which are our thoughts on various adoption related topics).

Please be sure to subscribe (here on our sidebar) to receive the latest Adoptee Tales and updates. And like us on Facebook to connect with other adoptees— help us reach 600 “likes” this week.

Thank you for spreading the word about Secret Sons & Daughters. We hit over 20,000 views yesterday!

Best wishes,

Heather & Christine
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