DNA Doesn't Lie - Figuring It Out

When I discovered that my DNA didn't connect to any of my known paternal relatives, it consumed me. Every moment of every day was spent trying to figure it out, work through the whirlwind of emotions, and still function.

I had asked in a FB Group about what this all meant, and I was told "You're an NPE!" I didn't know what that meant, but I would come to learn that NPE stands for Non Paternal Event and it describes any person who discovers that their father is not their biological father. As consumer DNA testing has become more prevalent, the definition has been expanded to include people who discover that they are donor conceived, adopted, switched at birth, and even kidnapped. Some common reactions to this information is intense grieving and a ferocious desire to discover our birth families.

This desire to find my birth father led me to add my DNA to a number of sites. One of them popped up with a very close match. We share roughly 1600cms of dna. As you can see from the chart below, this meant the potential relationships were grandparent/grandchild, aunt or uncle/niece or nephew, and half sibling. I quickly reached out to this match and discovered that she was born 11 months before me and was adopted as an infant. She knew next to nothing about her birth mom and absolutely nothing about her birth father. She was born in another state and things didn't make sense for her to be a maternal match, so we made the educated guess that we are paternal half sisters. From that moment on, we were like the two musketeers trying to solve this mystery.

Image courtesy of The DNA Detectives FB Group

We had a great clue....my ancestry matches included two people in the 1700cm range (indicating the same relationship possibilities stated above). I quickly did some digging and discovered that these two matches were siblings to each other and considering their ages, grandparent and half sibling relationships seemed unlikely. I had found an aunt and an uncle. I narrowed my research to their siblings, and specifically, their brothers. There were three of them...que the Mama Mia soundtrack "I have three possible fathers"

At this point I had approached my mom a couple of times but was met with "I don't understand, how does that happen, that's so weird" and felt that continued attempts to talk to her would be anything but fruitful. I turned to my brother.

At his urging, I agreed to meet with my mom to attempt a conversation one more time. It was a challenge because I was seething with anger, but I needed some answers. It was a struggle but she conceded that it was possible that N was my father. She said that N and P were room mates and P was R's boyfriend. R and my mom are cousins and they were also roommates at the time.

I FINALLY KNEW HIS NAME!

image courtesy of pixabay.com


DNA Doesn't Lie - The Backstory