It started simple enough. My nephew mentioned that he wanted me to get back into the family tree research. Sure, why not. It would be cool to see where we are from. I hopped into Ancestry.com, started building the tree, became super curious and said the unthinkable. “Why not have my DNA tested?”. For years, I was 100% against getting my DNA tested. Government conspiracies and all that. I threw caution to the wind, spit in a tube, and mailed it off.
I was in my living room when the results came in. Pages and pages of people who I shared DNA with. 1283 in all. More added each day as more and more also threw caution to the wind and submitted their DNA.
And the results were… not what I expected.
Smack dab in position 2 (after my mother) was my first cousin on my father’s side.
Well that is unexpected. I don’t have a first cousin on my father’s side. I have 2 uncles, one just married in October 2025, neither have had kids. My brothers and I were the last of the family line. Or were we?
We did the math, and 99% of all the roads lead back to one uncle. He has now taken caution to the wind as well, and has submitted his DNA.
We are in a world that is disrupting lives in a way that it has never done before. The ease of DNA (and the low low cost of $29 for Black Friday) allows anyone to travel down a path that seems so innocent, until they find out that their dad isn’t their dad, or that they have a 50 year old son that you knew nothing about.
Head over to Reddit and you’ll find a million stories about finding a new family member, a new dad, sister, brother. Betrayal and confusion and a loss of self is written in every post. Never in our wildest dreams did we think that we could change a life story in a blink of an eye, but yet here we are.
I’m still digging deeper into my DNA matches. Last night I came across someone who just didn’t fit given his name. I reached out to him and found out that he had been adopted. By someone who I had just learned about that day, from a cousin. I gave him access to my tree and said “I hope this helps”. I do this because in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t everyone deserve to know where they come from? To understand the health issues they may face? And doesn’t that just lead to more questions, confusion, or betrayal? Does finding the past ever fix the future? Does it change it in a positive way?
And I keep going through my matches. 15 new ones added just this week. Learning, researching, discovering. Looking for my own clarity, my own understanding, while meeting people that all come from the same blood line.