After discovering I was an NPE, I wanted to look at my mother’s life. I wanted to understand her more. My mother hated the name Martha Lee. She lived her life avoiding it whenever she could. I remember my grandmother sometimes calling her M.L. Mom felt M.L. was much better than the grating “Maaatha Lee”…
I was checking the 23andMe website three or four times a day. The first results that came in were for my oldest sister. She is twelve years older than me. I decided to wait for my other sister’s results to come in so that I could look at them together. Hers came just a few…
I think of those 18 months I kept this crushing secret entirely to myself as a period of complete denial fueled by panic. Besides being a world champion in compartmentalizing, I am also a master multi-tasker, so my life went on doing my routine tasks. You didn’t find me curled up in my bed, hiding…
I stared down at my iPad and started to shake looking at the 23andMe comparison between my brother and me. Estimated relationship: Half-sibling What does it feel like to discover that you aren’t really your Dad’s child? It felt like I had been punched in the stomach and while I struggled to catch my breath,…
I was an early adopter of DNA testing. I took my first DNA test in December 2012 with Ancestry. I couldn’t wait to see my ethnicities! The testing pool was smaller in the early days when many folks hadn’t tested yet. Ethnicities were lumped together. My results came up with over 80% of British/Irish together….
In 1926, Mrs. G. J. Wilkins of Atlanta Georgia wrote to the Office of Indian Affairs, “My great-grandfather on my father’s side was a full-blooded Indian with tribal relations with the Cherokees of Georgia.” Mrs. Wilkins was referring to Abraham Helton, known by his family as Young Chicken Chetiganete. He was born in 1843. He…