Listening to Wendy Spencer’s decades-long search for her biological father, the improbability of finding him, and then her shock after learning about the legacy of hatred he inherited from his own father, one would forgive Wendy if she decided to forget she ever found him.



<figure class="wp-block-image alignright wp-image-23624 size-medium"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="225" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wendy-spencer-a-1024-300x225.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23624" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wendy-spencer-a-1024-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wendy-spencer-a-1024-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wendy-spencer-a-1024-880x660.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wendy-spencer-a-1024.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Wendy, right, her father, Bill, and her daughter Cosette.</figcaption></figure>



But Wendy thought perhaps her love and her family could change that legacy.



“I know people can change,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I have witnessed it before. I see it slowly happening.&#8221;



Wendy’s story of connecting with her biological father, Bill Miller, is a testament to using love to conquer hate, confronting the truth about her biological family’s history, and, even more broadly, coming to terms with America’s own history of racism. People magazine recently featured Wendy&#8217;s story and how she&#8217;s attempting to change that family legacy.



“With all the hate in the world and misunderstandings, I wish people could see each other as human beings with similar hopes and desires,” she said.







Wendy, a 50-year-old hair stylist in Sacramento, is Jewish. She married an African American man, and they have four children. One of their sons is married to a Latina, and the other is married to a Filipina. After learning from her mother more than two decades ago that she’d been conceived during an affair, she began searching for her biological father.



Last year, she tested with 23andMe. In October, when Wendy logged into her account right after her grandson’s brit milah, the Jewish circumcision ceremony, she had a notice that she had a new DNA relative. Thinking maybe she had found a new cousin, she clicked on the file.



“There was a picture of a man, it said ‘Father 50 percent match 24 segments,’” Wendy said. “Then his name, ‘William Miller.’ Needless to say, I was shocked my family heard me shout from the other room!”



She soon was able to connect with Bill. They exchanged email messages and then talked on the phone.



“We talked for an hour and a half,&#8221; Wendy said. &#8220;He cried off and on and seemed so happy.&#8221;



He’d told her that he had seen her twice after she was born but that when her parents moved and then later divorced, he’d lost track of her, although he never stopped looking. Wendy found out that he was in a cancer ward in San Antonio, recovering from surgery. She arranged to go and visit him and then flew to Texas.



He picked her up at the airport after being discharged from the hospital, and took her meet her great aunt, and a cousin.



“After a few family stories and my aunt pulling out pictures, the beginning of a nice connection was being made,” Wendy said.



The next day she went and stayed at her biological father’s house. He lived alone and had never married. The house was a wreck, but the visit allowed for Wendy to learn more about him and his family. It was almost too much for her to bear.



“He told me the reason he had the DNA test was because he was always concerned that he had a little African American in his DNA and he wanted to find out once and for all, (he does not),” she said. “It was very obvious that my dad is a racist!”



The more he talked, the more uncomfortable Wendy became as he put everyone in racial categories or sprinkled his conversation with racist terms.



“It was like a minor stab in the heart every time,” she said.



But she wanted to know “the good, the bad, and the ugly” about her biological family. Her father obliged, telling her about his father, Wendy&#8217;s grandfather, Emmett Elliot Miller.



“He told me his dad had done evil things,” she said.



Emmett Miller had been an organizer in the KKK.



He’d been involved in trying to bomb an all-black college and helped to organize the picket to stop the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.



“I felt sick to my stomach; the thought of getting up and leaving occurred to me,” she said. “At the same time, I felt God&#8217;s presence with me. It was a very gut-wrenching conversation.”



She told him how hurtful his racism was to her and asked that he stop using some of the racist words that were part of his vocabulary.



“I could tell his honesty was mixed with all the emotions he had been feeling,” she said. “This lonely older man was genuinely happy to have a daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but his emotions were all mixed up, and he needed to share the conflict that was going on in his soul.”



His daughter is Jewish, married to a black man, and his grandchildren were all mixed, his great-grandchildren even more mixed.



Hearing her father&#8217;s stories about his family was almost too much for Wendy to process. She thought that even in her own lifetime as she was growing up in California surrounded by a family known for tolerance, her grandfather had been working so hard to prevent desegregation and the rights of black people to vote. When she eventually came home from Texas, Wendy said she was “an emotional wreck.”



She talked to her husband and her mother-in-law, who’d always had such sage advice about other matters. But on this, her mother-in-law had nothing to offer. Both of her mother-in-law&#8217;s parents had been murdered during the pre-civil rights era in Mississippi because of the color of their skin. Wendy&#8217;s mother in-law just didn&#8217;t have it in her to forgive.



“I’ve never seen my mother-in-law speechless, with no words of comfort or wisdom,” Wendy said. “She tried, but I could tell how shocking my news was to her.”



Still struggling with what she learned, Wendy continued to talk regularly with her biological father, and then he came to California to visit, arriving for Hanukkah. Wendy’s family welcomed him into their home. He stayed for five days, and became the center of attention. He connected particularly with Wendy’s son Michael and her youngest daughter Cosette. But on the fifth day of his visit, he stayed alone at home with Wendy’s husband. It did not go well.



But even after that, Wendy is trying to maintain the connection. Her father has sent Cosette gifts. He regularly emails, sends cards and calls.



From his point of view Bill said in a comment he made to People that although his language is sometime coarse he is not a racist or a bigot. At one point in the early 1960s, he and a friend were considering moving to Mississippi to help register voters, he has close friends who are Jewish and he regrets that there is tension between him and Wendy&#8217;s husband. <img decoding="async" class="ajT" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif" alt="">



“He says he loves me and does not deserve me,” Wendy said. “I am glad we have found each other.”



But she doesn&#8217;t know how it all will end up.



“I do not regret finding him and learning about the other half of me,” she said. “It has not been easy, but all of the story has been told.”

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Ending a Legacy of Hate

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-23616" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Screen-shot-2016-01-22-at-12.33.27-PM.jpg" alt="" width="232" height="288" />
The ability to extract and then sequence ancient DNA, not just from ancient human bones, but also from the bones of our ancient cousins the Neanderthals, is upending old notions of human migration and history.
<h2>Ancient DNA</h2>
The latest in a rapid succession of<a href="https://www.nature.com/news/evidence-mounts-for-interbreeding-bonanza-in-ancient-human-species-1.19394#Early"> new findings</a> suggests that intermixing between Neanderthals and early modern humans happened earlier than we once thought – about <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16544.epdf?referrer_access_token=CMEgDNGJuW7rNIX8-5DetdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MInt_2jYvKBG--7sOqWdGTzUvToNHVvyhzE6mZLLgJJmR7yoinCDiE3vg9Q5AVA-nZquOQOOQnhcfdq9lCTp4TcwdkXstlNRZ7xfdZRcnYB6sIPffF_OSID_rECaKCbx-nDNFAoD9EQPv4N_1WWd-A8l0yEwuBeZ6eFt0-g5i0T9MPLVmGCIKRPC0jEsDeYZxD78jhZvPiTcPMjQJT5jr-&amp;tracking_referrer=www.nature.com">100,000 years ago</a> versus <a href="http://sriramsankararaman.com/publications/sankararaman.pgen.2012.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">50,000 years ago</a> – at a time that challenges long held theories about when humans migrated out of Africa and how far those migrations took them. And by looking at DNA sequences extracted from several different Neanderthal bones, researchers discovered that the gene flow didn’t just go from Neanderthals to humans.
This latest finding illustrates the impact DNA data, specifically data from ancient DNA, has had. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/15/svante-paabo-dna-neanderthal-genetics">Svante Paabo</a> of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology pioneered this innovation for extracting ancient DNA and accurately sequencing, and it radically transformed our understanding of human history.
<h2>New Information About the Past</h2>
Harvard population geneticist David Reich puts this new innovation into context in a long interview he did with<a href="http://edge.org/conversation/david_reich-the-genomic-ancient-dna-revolution"> The Edge</a>. Reich, who studies genetic variation among human populations, said that scientists have gained great new insights into history by comparing ancient DNA sequences to present-day humans’ genetic data.
“It’s a radically new type of information about the past; it’s a great gift to be able to have access to it,” Reich said in the interview. “It’s a great surprise. Who would have thought DNA survived that long?”
Probably the most profound insight from looking at ancient DNA and making comparisons with data from modern humans is that all human populations today are mixed.
<h2>Neanderthals and Modern Humans</h2>
This isn’t just about mixing between humans and Neanderthals, but mixing among early human populations and that data offers great insight into human history. He’s also looked at non-ancient human DNA to garner similar insights. So for example, Reich has looked at populations in India where they found that populations mixed there between 2000 to 4000 years ago. Before that there were unmixed populations.
“Amazingly, what you could see from the genetic data was an event in which you could see cultural change,” he said.
You can see something similar in more recent history by looking at the DNA of African Americans, which includes European ancestry, a clear mark of the slavery in the United States.
“What you’re seeing in the imprint of these populations genetically is the history of power inequality, which is usually males of power from one group having preferential access to local females, and that’s what you see in these groups,” Reich said.
Listen to Reich’s interview below.
The Edge Foundation, also has a video of his interview on its site<a href="http://edge.org/conversation/david_reich-the-genomic-ancient-dna-revolution"> here</a>.
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/users/65424416&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true" width="100%" height="450" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Blast from the Past

Total strangers, John and Rhonda have one thing in common, the same father.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-23484 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JR-quote-300x169.jpg" alt="J$R quote" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JR-quote-300x169.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JR-quote-768x432.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JR-quote-880x495.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JR-quote-980x553.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/JR-quote.jpg 984w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />


The two made that discovery earlier this year after using 23andMe.


“Nobody knew about John,” said Rhonda, a 55 year-old marketer in Buffalo New York.


For John, recently retired and 67 who also lives in the Buffalo area, DNA testing was the only way he would have ever found Rhonda and information about his biological father. For both of them the test helped lead them to clues about their father and a tangled history of multiple families and an ongoing search for siblings spread out through generations and geography.
“I now have a printed family tree that  takes three trees to show and is  so long, it covers the top of two long tables,” said John. “(Testing has) been a positive experience for me and a healing experience for the family. I&#8217;ve been welcomed with open arms.”


Being orphaned, along with his half brother, from his single mom when he was just 10 had been so traumatic for John, that he blanked out all the memory of his childhood. He couldn’t even remember his mother’s face until a few years ago when he saw a photo of her for the first time. That had been out of sheer luck, after a mutual acquaintance connected him to his cousin and elderly aunt. John believes it may have been more than luck with a little help from his mother, watching from above.
It was his aunt and cousins who had the photo and tidbits about his mother. John and his family enjoyed a series of reunions in the US and in Italy over the past 5 years. His aunt also shared with John the one bit of information she had about his biological father, his father’s first name.
<div id="attachment_23482" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23482" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-23482" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/John-Vitale-200x200.jpg" alt="John Vitale" width="200" height="200" />John Vitale</div>
“There is no way I could have identified the family on my father&#8217;s side,” he said. “All I had to go on was his name was Marvin, and I only learned that a couple of years ago.”


But for both John and Rhonda using 23andMe to explore their ancestry changed not just what they knew about their families and their background, but their understanding about themselves.
John had thought he was Italian, but was “shocked” to learn he was half Ashkenazi Jew on his father’s side.


“I knew nothing about my father, I assumed he was Italian,” said John. “My mother&#8217;s family is Italian with roots in Sicily and Milan.   I was raised Catholic.”
Learning about his Jewish ancestry, didn’t change his beliefs, but it did change his perceptions.


“It has made me more sensitive and curious of the Jewish faith,” he said.


For Rhonda, who was raised by a Jewish mother, learning about about her biological mother’s Catholic background put certain things about herself in context. It also raised a lot of “nature versus nurture issues” for her.


“I grew up as an only child, in a family that I was very different from,” she said. “I look nothing like, or act nothing like, my adopted mother or father.”


And then there was the connection she made using 23andMe to her biological family for the first time – not just to John, but also to a full sister named Trisha.
That connection with her sister was so strong that Rhonda wonders if there’s a chance that they might actually be twins separated and adopted out to different families.


“When I met Trisha, it felt like I was talking to myself,” Rhonda said. “The similarities were astounding.”


23andMe also helped Rhonda connect with her oldest living half-sibling, who is unrelated to John. She was one of the 2 children born to her mother when her mother was in an internment camp in Germany. It was that woman, Danuta, who gave Rhonda much of what she knows about her mother, including her mother’s history with Marvin and the other children she bore him.
<div id="attachment_23483" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23483" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-23483" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/rhoried-pic-200x200.jpg" alt="Rhonda Ried" width="200" height="200" />Rhonda Ried</div>
All of Rhonda’s full siblings were adopted by other families, she said. At least two of whom she’s connected with through 23andMe. Rhonda discovered she has 5 full siblings and 6 half siblings, including John. And there could be more, she said.
Now both Rhonda and John are hoping that they will be able to connect with other siblings. They are aware of two sisters in Arizona.


“We are becoming acquainted with members of the family living around the country,” John said.


They have scheduled a virtual family reunion on Skype in a few weeks, but their search continues.


“I fully expect we’ll find others,” said John. “We’ll just keep looking.”

Nobody Knew

Abandoned as an infant in a Minneapolis laundry room almost 50 years ago, Liz Kellner used 23andMe to help <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-21929" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Liz-Quote-200x200.jpg" alt="Liz Quote" width="200" height="200" />her piece together the story of her birth.
In the process, she was able to connect with a biological sister, Tammy, who like her had been abandoned as an infant; the sisters have pieced together their stories, connected with other siblings and even found their biological parents.


We first <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/putting-it-together/">wrote about Liz</a> two years ago, and a few days ago, ABC News covered Liz and Tammy’s story.
Their story was also recently covered by the <a href="http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_29002587/woman-left-baby-at-st-paul-hospital-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pioneer Press</a>. You can check out the ABC News piece below.
&nbsp;
<iframe loading="lazy" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/thFNeUTh_iw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

Sisters Connecting After 50 Years

<div id="attachment_23295" style="width: 250px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23295" class="wp-image-23295 size-full" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/JohnBrian.jpg" alt="John&#038;Brian" width="240" height="294" />John, standing, with his sister Kathy and their half-brother Brian, who they found through 23andMe.</div>
Brothers from different mothers, John and Brian came together because of 23andMe.
For John, 68, finding a half-brother was the last thing he expected.
“I was shocked,” he said.
John used 23andMe because he’s interested in science. Since his days in high school biology class, John has always been curious about genetics. He wasn’t looking for family.
“Imagine my surprise when I found a half-brother,” he said.
Actually his results initially listed Brian as a predicted grandson – half siblings share about 20 percent of their DNA, the same percentage shared by a grandfather and grandson. There is also an 18-year difference in age between the two, so John had some tense moments trying to figure out his relationship with Brian.
But when Brian first contacted him by email, the message jarred loose a memory for John. He – and the rest of his immediate family – all knew that his Dad, who ran a photo studio in a coal-mining town in West Virginia, had had an affair with a woman who worked for him and that the woman got pregnant.
“We knew there was a child out there but that’s it,” said John, who eventually took over the family business.
<div id="attachment_23296" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23296" class="size-medium wp-image-23296" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Francis-John-Brians-Dad-225x300.jpg" alt="John and Brian's father." width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Francis-John-Brians-Dad-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Francis-John-Brians-Dad.jpg 240w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />John and Brian&#8217;s father.</div>
Brian knew none of this.
He actually had no information at all about his biological family apart from some basic non-identifying facts about his mother – her religion and age for example.
Brian, a 49 year-old CPA living in Florida, often wondered about where he came from, but when he tested with 23andMe back in 2014 it was just to get some very basic information about his ancestry. He didn’t expect to find family.
When Brian first got his results he looked through his DNA Relative matches and among the long list of distant cousins, he saw one very close match, a relative with whom he shared 20 percent of his DNA.
“That’s close,” Brian said.
He just didn’t know how close. Looking at a 23andMe video Brian figured out that he and his close match were likely half siblings. For someone who’d never knew any biological relatives, this was a big deal. So Brian sent a message to his match and waited.
When John looked through the message from Brian and some of the facts he provided, he quickly figured out that Brian was his half brother. They began exchanging messages.
“I was a little leery about how he’d handle it,” said Brian. “It had to be shocking for him.”
Brian’s sister, who is also an adoptee, encouraged him to go forward with meeting John and his wife Jennie along with John’s sister Kathy and her husband Paul.
Brian didn’t just worry about how his existence would impact John and his family; he was also concerned about whether he’d be accepted. John and his family are religious and relatively conservative. His wife has a doctorate in theology and is a Christian counselor.
Brian was raised in a not very religious Jewish household, and he’s gay. He didn’t know what to expect.
“Over the years I imagined many different scenarios, so I went in with my eyes wide open,” Brian said.
John and his family welcomed him with open arms.
&#8220;I could not have asked for a nicer experience,” said Brian. “They were cordial, polite and respectful.&#8221;
John felt the same.
“It meant a lot to meet him,” said John. “I’m extremely impressed with Brian, his maturity and intelligence. He’s a good caring person.”
John also offered something to Brian that was invaluable, a vast collection of photos and even film of their biological father. Their father had run a photo studio business and was always taking pictures and filming.
Brian got to see his biological father at all these different stages of his life and even see how he moved, his mannerism and how he talked.
“It was more than I could have asked for,” Brian said.
Sharing that gave John his own sense of joy, he said.
Their father had a lot of flaws, John said, but everyone liked him. He had a big personality and John tried to share some of that with Brian.
“It meant a lot to me because it meant a lot to Brian,” John said.

Eyes Wide Open

Fast and sure on the ice, Olympic gold medalist <a href="http://apoloantonohno.com/">Apolo Anton Ohno</a> was less sure about his ancestral background.
<div id="attachment_23315" style="width: 295px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23315" class="size-medium wp-image-23315" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Apolo-Ono-C-fixed-B-285x300-285x300.jpg" alt="Olympic gold medalist Apolo Ohno and Extreme Genes radio host Scott Fischer." width="285" height="300" />Olympic gold medalist Apolo Ohno and Extreme Genes radio host Scott Fischer.</div>
Raised by a single father, who’d immigrated to the United States from Japan, Apolo didn’t know much about his mother’s side of the family. On a recent episode of the syndicated family history radio show <a href="http://extremegenes.com/ep-115-olympic-gold-medalist-apolo-anton-ohno-dr-robin-smith-on-dna-week/">Extreme Genes</a>, Apolo said he turned to 23andMe to find out more about his ancestry. Along with the eight time Olympic medalist, the show featured 23andMe product scientist Robin Smith, PhD, who highlighted some of the company’s ancestry features and tools.
During his segment, Apolo explained that growing up outside of Seattle, he was sometimes asked about his nationality. “What are you?” is how the question was often asked.
“I’m half Japanese, but they’d ask what’s the other half,” Apolo told the show host Scott Fischer.
He didn’t know much about the other half of his ancestry.
His mother and father had divorced when he was very young and he stayed with his dad. He didn’t have much contact with his mother and because she’d been adopted she really didn’t know much about her family history.
But he was always curious about his ancestors, he said during the show.
On his Japanese side, he had a rich source of family lore not just from his grandmother, but because it is custom to carefully catalog the family going back generations. There are extensive household registries called koseki, as well as death records and records compiled by families themselves that helped Apolo trace back his Japanese family history. 
On his mother’s side, he had very little to go on. That’s why he turned to 23andMe. He learned the other half of his ancestry was rooted in England and Ireland, which might explain that even though his hair is black, his sideburns and goatee are red. He also learned that he has a little North African ancestry.
Apolo said his curiosity wasn’t just about learning about himself, but learning more generally about the human story. He mentioned reading about the discovery of 120,000 year old bones in China that change our understanding about the timing of human migration.
“It’s awesome,” he said of the science.
Before Apolo’s segment on the show, 23andMe scientist Robin Smith discussed some of 23andMe’s tools customers can use to explore not just their ancestry, but also their own connection to the human story.
Robin, who started his career as a geneticist focused on spinal cord regeneration, works on writing health and trait reports for 23andMe along with helping the company’s ancestry team develop features. One of the projects Robin worked on is 23andMe’s new Neanderthal report.
All humans outside of Africa carry DNA signatures of Neanderthals, a sister species to modern humans that went extinct about 35,000 years ago. Using new sequencing data, 23andMe can pinpoint where those Neanderthal variants show up in your genome, Robin said.
The report also looks at the different traits some of those variants are associated with – back hair and height, for instance.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-23316" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Neanderthal-Report-640x397.jpg" alt="Neanderthal Report" width="640" height="397" />

Olympic Search

The memory is fleeting but Josh Schultz remembers speaking to his father once. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22987" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Josh's quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> 
It was a phone call, and Josh was just a boy. He can’t conjure up everything his dad said, or what his voice was like. He just knows they talked.
“I do remember my father said he was mailing me a Christmas present,” Josh said. “I waited years to no avail.”
It was the only contact he ever had with his father.
When Josh was about 10 he was told his father had been killed in New York, shot three times. His father had been involved in criminal activity, and that was part of the reason Josh’s mom had left him.
“I was so young I don’t think I even realized what it meant,” said Josh, who is now 36 and works in IT.
Raised by his mom, Josh never had contact with his father’s side of the family. Because he and his mother moved and so too did his father’s family, it made it almost impossible for him to find them once he started looking as an adult.
“I searched for years,” he said. “I used various different methods but I would always hit a brick wall.”
Mostly using public records searches and the small bits of information his mother knew about his dad and his dad’s family. At one point Josh was able to track down his father’s death certificate. Along with the cause of death – shot in the head and neck – the death certificate stated that no one claimed the body or his father’s belongings.
“It was just another brick wall,” he said.
In 2014, Josh used 23andMe for the first time. He wanted to learn more about his ancestry.
“You know my main curiosity was where my roots came from,” he said. “I had all these question marks. I didn’t really know anything about my father’s family. I was just curious about where my genes came from.”
But almost right away he started seeing close relative matches that he didn’t recognize. He connected with one of the second cousins he found through 23andMe’s DNA Relatives tool. The two began exchanging family information and quickly Josh’s second cousin connected him to an aunt living in Texas and then to his father’s brother, who lived no more than half an hour away in South Florida.
They spoke first on the phone and then in person. They look alike and were able to share family stories. Josh learned a little more about his father and his father’s family. At one point Josh’s uncle made it to Josh’s daughter’s first birthday.
“It’s not just meeting him, but he’s got kids too so I’ve got cousins now,” Josh said. “The family resemblance is kind of funny.”
Looking at how much he’s been able to learn about himself and his family has prompted Josh to encourage others to try 23andMe, not just those searching for family like him, but others who could help contribute to new genetic discoveries.
“I would love to see as many people sign up for the service as possible,” he said. “I think it’d be wonderful to compare more genomes and isolate the causes of diseases.”

Breaking Through A Brick Wall

Of course he knew he was adopted but that only made Tony Mercer wonder more <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-23002" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Tony Mercer Quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />about what made him so tall, what made his thumbs so stubby, and where he got his passion for playing the piano.
“My adoptive family was very caring and supportive as I was growing up, but I never felt completely …integrated,” said Tony, a professional pianist and church music director. “My personality and interests and theirs were just not quite the same.”
He loves his family, but he also knows that there are differences that can only be explained by genetics. So, Tony decided to use 23andMe to learn a little bit more about himself – information he said he didn’t think he could learn any other way, he said. He was interested in learning more about his health, the genetics behind some of his traits, and where in the world his ancestors came from. Even though he was adopted and curious about his biological parents, he was still wary about connecting with biological relatives, however.
“Actually, I had no desire to find my biological family,” Tony said. “I had a lot of fear of rejection. I assumed they gave me up for a good reason, and I was afraid of what that reason might be.”
<div id="attachment_23007" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23007" class="size-medium wp-image-23007" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-300x169.jpg" alt="Tony Mercer, right, with his adoptive dad Lindy Mercer, and his biological mother, Lydia Raska. " width="300" height="169" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-300x169.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-768x432.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-880x495.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Tony Mercer, right, with his adoptive dad Lindy Mercer, and his biological mother, Lydia Raska.</div>
He’d seen his adoptive brother go through being rejected when he tried to connect to his biological family, and Tony didn’t want to go through the same thing.
“I didn’t want to face that kind of emotional pain,” he said.
It’s a fear that a lot of adoptees go through – the possibility of being doubly rejected by their biological families. (Once when they were given up for adoption, and a second time when they try to connect later in life.) At the same time, there is often an overpowering need to know. Tony skated along that border between simply wanting to know who his mother and father were and the fear of being rejected by them.
So, when he first got his results, he focused on health information, his traits, and his ancestry. He did look at his DNA Relatives, but they were all very distant.
“I hadn’t really expected to find any close relatives,” he said.
But in 2015, all that changed when Tony connected with a first cousin named Melanie. They exchanged some information. Tony figured out they were connected on his maternal side, and he asked if perhaps she had an aunt who had given up a child for adoption in Alaska in 1984.
Yes, she did.
Melanie knew a family secret about her aunt Lydia giving up a baby boy born on the same day,  in the same year, and the same city in Alaska as Tony.
“Besides my mother, she was the only person who knew about me,” said Tony.
He marvels at the luck that the one person who knew about him, besides his biological mother, had also tested with 23andMe.
“I know how lucky I am,” he said.
Things happened very quickly after that. Melanie connected Tony with her aunt Lydia, his biological mother. First, Tony and Lydia had a few email exchanges, then they talked on the phone, and finally she came to Florida to meet him in person.
“As far as Lydia is concerned, just meeting her and seeing that connection … it was very positive and stabilizing for me,” he said.
He saw in her traits he had in himself, and felt connected in a way that he hadn’t ever felt before. It’s not just that he’s tall, has stubby thumbs, and plays the piano, he said.
“Watching her interact with my friends, I immediately noticed that all their positive traits, and the reasons I love all of them, are traits that she has,” said Tony.
He wondered if perhaps his friends were representative of his own search for finding a deep connection to who he was.
“I think it’s just the most awesome thing in the world,” he said.
Tony also was able to learn a bit about his birth and eventually connect to his biological father. He learned that both his biological mother and father came from musical families, which explained a lot.
“Although I was inspired by my adoptive family in North Carolina and Tennessee who were musicians, I think a lot of that inborn talent is genetic,” said Tony, who first started playing piano as a six year old.
Tony’s adoptive father supported his search. His adoptive mother died when he was 16. That also made connecting with his biological mother that much more important, he said. It wasn’t so much that she filled a void he had with losing his mother, but that she is giving him another chance to have a maternal presence in his life.
He also got more context about himself. He’s 6’5” and he learned that all the men in his mom’s family are tall. He learned musical talent and red hair runs in the family. Even how he’s gravitated to work that involves helping others seems to be genetic, he said.
From his mother, Tony was also able to learn more about why he was put up for adoption. That gave him the ability to finally get an answer to the question he always had growing up.
“I have so much closure and peace about my adoption now, and I’ve got an awesome mom back in my life from all this,” he said.
His mother also helped Tony connect to his biological father, and the two have talked on the phone and hope to meet each other in person soon. More recently he met with his biological mother, his aunt, and his biological brother in Las Vegas.
“I know this might not happen for everyone, but I am so thankful to 23andme for making this experience even possible. Technology and science is so crazy these days, and I thank you guys for being on the cutting edge and making this accessible to the public.”

How Lucky I Am

Many adoptees talk about walking through a crowd, looking at the faces of strangers and wondering if they are brushing shoulders with one of their parents or a brother or sister.
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<div id="attachment_22978" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22978" class="size-medium wp-image-22978" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FB_IMG_1444610175227-300x285.jpg" alt="Carole, center, with her sister Felice Weinbaum, left, and Sabrina Goldberg on the right." width="300" height="285" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FB_IMG_1444610175227-300x285.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FB_IMG_1444610175227.jpg 720w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Carole flanked on her left by sister Felice Weinbaum, and her sister Sabrina Goldberg on her right.</div>
Carole Huber, an adoptee, was no different. That urge to learn more about her biological parents, about her story, never really went away. But decades of wondering left her thinking she would never find her biological family or learn her story. That changed after using 23andMe.


“This brought me to my family,” she said.


In fact, Carole met her mother, without even knowing it, more than 2,500 miles from where she had been placed for adoption.
Carole worked as an oncology nurse at a Florida hospital’s cancer unit. She now thinks hard about one patient in particular, as well as his wife, daughters and sister-in-laws that had visited him daily over his three week hospital stay on her unit.
Many years later, Carole now has trouble remembering his family and any conversations they may have had, but she thinks about them all the time.
“My (biological) mother’s husband was admitted onto the oncology unit. I was the charge nurse so I met my mother, sisters, cousins and aunts. I was in the room with them, but I didn’t know,” she said. “I had no idea.”


She now also wonders about a house, not far from her home.
“It turns out my aunt lives in that house and I pass it every day and I didn’t know,” she said.
Now after learning about her family, those encounters and her daily trips past her aunts house suddenly take on a new meaning.
<div id="attachment_22982" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22982" class="size-medium wp-image-22982" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Carole-and-Family-300x271.jpg" alt="From left to right Carole's daughter Carley, Ryan Kaplan, Carole Huber, Marissa Kaplan and Joan Sinkin, Carole's aunt." width="300" height="271" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Carole-and-Family-300x271.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Carole-and-Family.jpg 720w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />From left to right Carole&#8217;s daughter Carley, her cousin Ryan Kaplan, Carole Huber, Ryan&#8217;s sister Marissa Kaplan and Joan Sinkin, Carole&#8217;s aunt.</div>
Until recently Carole didn’t know anything about her biological family. Put up for adoption in 1964, she had almost no information about herself. By accident she’d been given her mother’s maiden name, but it was so common to be unhelpful. And her mother had also told her something.
“My mother thought I was part Swedish,” Carole said.
Wanting to learn a little more about herself, Carole turned to 23andMe in 2011.
“So I set on a journey to find my ancestry,” she said. “I never intended to find family.”


She learned that her adoptive mother was not far off with what she knew. Her 23andMe results showed she had about 40 percent Norwegian ancestry and she learned many other things, but initially didn’t connect with any close family. All that changed in 2014 when two new matches popped up in her DNA Relatives on 23andMe.
Carole connected with a brother and sister with whom she shared about 7 percent DNA – meaning a close relative match. For Carole, who’d never before been connected to a close biological relative, this was a big deal.
Messaging the two through 23andMe she explained that she was adopted and that she knew almost nothing about her biological family. Giving them her email address and the one bit of information she did have about her birth mother, her mother’s maiden name. She got a quick message back.
“I’ll get back to you.”
This man and woman turned out to be the children of Carole’s first cousin. Their grandmother is Carole’s aunt, the aunt who lives in the house Carole passed by almost daily on her way to work.
In the meantime, she went to Facebook and looked them up scanning through their family photos.


“Within 15 minutes I was looking at my mother’s face,” she said.


The next morning she heard back from her new found relatives and was brought into a very large family. Her biological mother had only died nine months before, but Carole&#8217;s aunt gave her the backstory of her birth and her biological mother’s life.
She’d been conceived after her birth mother moved to Los Angeles, but that had remained a secret. After Carole was given up for adoption, her mother moved back to New York, ironically not all that far from where Carole grew up.
Within a few months of returning from Los Angeles, Carole’s birth mother met her husband and was married. Soon thereafter, she had two more daughters, Carole’s half sisters. Her aunt told Carole all this only 12 hours after they made their connections through 23andMe.


“She knew about me and she told me I have two sisters,” Carole said.


Right after talking to her aunt, Carole got a call from one of her sisters.
“It was so immediate,” Carole said.

Wondering for more than 50 years about her biological family and where she’d come from, the immediacy of learning was a little shocking for everyone.


“I wasn’t sad or happy, just emotional,” she said. “I know I got very, very lucky, I know that something like this could have gone very differently, but they’ve embraced me and I’m part of their family now.”
Carole now has two sisters, two aunts, an uncle, nine first cousins, and 5 nieces and nephews. Her own three children are intrigued and her adoptive mother is tickled by the whole story.
“She’s very solid in her own shoes,” said Carole about her adoptive mother. “She thinks it’s a hoot.”


Carole’s one regret is that she made this connection just a few months too late and wasn’t able to meet her birth mother. That’s when she thinks of all the times she might have crossed paths with her mother and her aunt. It turns out that her mother and her husband retired to Florida and had lived in the same town as Carole. Her aunt lives there too, only a few blocks from her home.
“My aunt lives in the next development over and I pass her house every single day on the way to work,” she said.
She’s sure she met her mother when her husband was admitted to the oncology unit where she was the charge nurse.
“I met my mother, sisters, aunts and uncles,” she said “But I had no idea.”


Carole feels extremely fortunate and is so grateful for 23andMe who has helped change her life forever.

Ancestry Service — Page 18