Hope-Fire

I realize it's been a while. I started this blog as a way of venting and getting my thoughts, fears, worries, and even my hopes out. I intended, originally, on starting all of this off with a timeline of my life so you would all know where I started on this journey, the lies I was told, the hurdles I had already jumped. But some of it is too painful and/or complicated to say right now. So I'm jumping ahead to the recent months.

I've been busy trying to learn about genetics and how I can use my DNA to find my father. Boy has it been interesting...

I did one of those Ancestry DNA tests and I have about 125 pages of genetic cousins, most of them quite distant. A few of them are in the 2nd, 3rd, or high-4th cousin range. But how do I use this information to find my dad?

I had already built a family tree for my mother's side of the family and it's very large. My mother's parents both came from large LDS families and those families date back to the beginnings of the LDS church, back when they practiced polygamy. So I have countless distant cousins on my mother's side. This certainly complicated things.

I finally decided it was time to approach my half-brother, Calvin, and ask him if he would take a DNA test to help me eliminate my cousin-matches on my mother's side. He agreed immediately and I didn't have to go into my persuasive speech that I had been practicing. He's a good brother, for sure, and I'm tremendously grateful for his presence in my life.

Calvin and I have the same mom but have different dads. At the time, I assumed that having my brother tested would mean that I could eliminate about 50% of my genetic matches, because he and I had 50% identical DNA.. right? WRONG! As it turns out, I could immediately eliminate about 25 pages of my matches, including basically all of my closer matches. You see, my brother inherited 50% of his DNA from our mom, and I also inherited 50% of my DNA from our mother. But that doesn't mean we got the same genes from her. Half siblings typically share around 1700 centimorgans (cM, which is a measurement of DNA). My brother and I share about 1900 cM, which doesn't mean that our parents are related or anything. It just means that we got slightly more identical DNA from our mother than the average half-siblings inherit.

So I had my brother's DNA kit processed on Ancestry and I did some research and found that most experts and people who have successfully tracked others down using genetic genealogy recommend that you also upload your Raw DNA File (which you can download right from Ancestry) onto at least two other sites: Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and GEDMatch. I had to pay a small fee to upload my info onto FTDNA and to be able to see my matches, but GEDMatch was totally free. They each have their own strengths and those strengths come in very handy when trying to figure out which genetic relatives are on which side of your family.

I spent about 6 months looking through my matches and finding maternal links to almost all of them. I had one new match on Ancestry that was an estimated 3rd cousin and try as I might, I could not link him to my mother's family. I emailed this man, I'll call him Tom (name changed for privacy purposes). I asked him if he might be willing to help me figure out which side of my family he belonged on. He wrote back but said he was very new to all of this but that I might be linked to his ancestors who traveled out west during the Mormon migration. Once I read the word "Mormon," I immediately crossed him off my list as a potential link to my father's side. But you know what they say about assuming things, right? When you assume you make an ASS of U and ME. Yeah...

I kept going back to Tom and looking at his tree. I could not find a link to my mother. Then I realized he attached his genetic kit to his wife's family tree, so the tree I was looking at wasn't even his tree!

I also had a match whom I will call Mary. She was a high-4th cousin match (meaning not quite as distantly related as a low-4th cousin match). Well, Ancestry came out with a new tool called "Shared Matches" and I was able to look at my shared matches with her (people she and I both match with). Turns out, she was also related to Tom! So now I had two people who were related to each other  and me but they were not related to Calvin. These two people were closely related to me (in relation to everyone else) yet they were two of only a handful of people whom I could not link to Calvin.

A flicker of hope lit in my heart. I quickly put that out because I've had hope before and it rarely turned out well.

I went to GEDMatch and saw that Mary was also on there; unfortunately, Tom was not. I could see that Mary and I shared a fair bit of DNA on chromosome 4. I share DNA with my  brother on every chromosome, so I looked at him and saw that I also shared DNA on chromosome 4 with Calvin. When I looked more closely, I found that the segments I shared with both Calvin and Mary overlapped, meaning Mary and Calvin should definitely be related since we all shared almost the same segment on Chromosome 4 and it was a large segment. They should have definitely been related. But when I compared them both in GEDMatch, they were shown as being completely unrelated to each other. So that means that the area I match with Calvin on Chromosome 4 was inherited through our mother (and back even farther to one of her parents, and one of their parents..). The area I match with Mary on Chromosome 4 would have been inherited through my father (and back even farther to one of his ancestors).

Since Mary and Tom were both also related and I could see that Tom and my brother were NOT related, I knew that Tom was also on my father's side of the family. So I began inspecting their trees. I created an Excel document to keep track of their genealogy back several generations. Because Tom had linked his DNA kit to his wife's tree, I had to go into his tree and manually select Tom so I could see his tree. I very quickly found a set of common ancestors between both Tom and Mary. They shared the same set of distant grandparents (great grandparents for Tom and 2x great grandparents for Mary).

That hope-fire in my chest flickered again, a little bigger this time. But once again, I put it out quickly. I was sure I had made a mistake somewhere. After all, I'm not a scientist. I could have misunderstood all the scientific lingo, the DNA jargon I had read and read, and re-read and re-read. I could have been wrong. I secretly wished I was still in touch with my high school biology teachers so I could ask them if I was interpreting the shared segments on the 4th chromosome accurately.

I discussed this in-depth with my husband, who is quite smart in his own right. He and I both felt like this was very promising. But still, we could have been wrong. I was terrified to believe that I was on the right path. Hope is a terrifying thing to hold onto; I was afraid it would burn me alive.

But still I pressed on. I found a website called DNA Adoption (dnaadoption.com) and they have a wealth of information on their about using DNA to help you find a missing parent. As I read through their information, I realized that I had already been doing the things they recommend. I found a known relative (Calvin) and had him tested. I found another close-ish relative (Mary) who thankfully put their DNA file onto GEDMatch and I compared both people to see if they match each other. The information on DNA Adoption said that if you can confirm you share the same portions of DNA on the same chromosome, but the two people who SHOULD match don't actually match each other, then you can be certain that those two people are on either side of your family, one on your mom's side and one on your dad's side. So I was right! Mary is related to me through my father. It's a fairly distant match according to the amount of DNA we share, so she's unlikely to know who my father is, but being on his side was enough.

The fire in my heart began to burn again and this time, I let it burn.. just a small, tiny, flicker of a flame. But I let it burn and I allowed myself to feel its warmth in my soul.

DNA Adoption also said that if you can find two people on the same side (for me, that would be Mary and Tom), you can use their family trees to triangulate your Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA). I had already found that.

Now I'm on the journey of trying to find all of their descendants. This couple, who would be my 2x great grandparents, had 11 children. Each of those children had around 8 children on average. Then so on. I now have a list of about a third-to-half of the possible offspring who could be my father and so far, that list contains about 35 men.

All I know about the time frame in which I was conceived is that my mother was 23 years old, she had a 6 month old son (that would be Calvin) and she was married to Calvin's father at the time of my conception and birth. She was living and working in Las Vegas at the time. When Calvin's father found out she was cheating, he moved back to his hometown (which was out of state and was also where my mother was from). Shortly after that, she called him and said she was pregnant and insisted that he was the father. He flew her back home and took care of her, my brother, and me after I was born. But it was no secret within the family that I was not his baby. A DNA test done between me and Calvin's dad back in 2008 confirmed that and it was confirmed again when I did the DNA test with Calvin, which showed that we are half-siblings.

Now I'm trying to find the remaining descendants of these paternal 2x great grandparents of mine and also trying to find out if any of these men were living or working in Las Vegas during the time of my conception.

It's surreal to think that, as I type this, I might have my father's name written in a notebook sitting right next to me. This man, whose identity has eluded me for years, might be moments away from being found. It could also be years. But I know I will find him.

He likely doesn't know I exist since my mother moved out of state shortly after becoming pregnant. But I am not naive. I know he might be aware of me and possibly told my mom to get lost. He might have told her to get an abortion. He might have been married and didn't want to ruin his marriage. He might not even be alive. I'm ready for those truths because at least they are truths and they will be known. I'm tired of not knowing.

So I will let this fire burn and maybe, just maybe, the heat of it will lead me to my father.

A Mother's Day Surprise!

I'm going to fast forward quite a bit here as my purpose for this blog is not to abide by the rules of chronology but to simply share what's on my mind at any given moment.

My adoptive-father, Greg, left us shortly after my eighth birthday. Without preamble, he gathered my mom, brother, and I together for a Mother's Day surprise. I don't remember every detail, but I recall being with everyone in my grandfather's wood shop, which my father frequently used for crafting and whatnot. We entered the wood shop thinking that he had made something beautiful for my mom when in reality, there was no significance to the location and apparently he forgot what day it was (seriously, who leaves their wife on Mother's Day?!). When we left the wood shop, we were a broken family; perhaps we should have all filed back into the shop to be glued back together with wood biscuits and held with clamps until my parents could work out their problems.

At this point it's important to note that my brother and I had no idea our parents had any problems to start with. All of their disagreements were apparently done in private. We never heard them raise their voices toward each other. We never felt any discord in the air. So my father's decision to leave was quite shocking indeed.

So that was it. We went back home and he packed his things and left. We hardly saw him after that even though he only moved down the street. He left us for another woman and her two children.

His mistress would call our home while our mother was at work and harass me and my brother, only eight and nine years old, respectively. We would huddle together in the corner, holding each other, crying, because of the awful things she would say.

After our dad left, Mom went off the deep end. She would leave for days or weeks at a time and we were left to fend for ourselves with little-to-no food. Because it was summer time, we couldn't rely on our school for breakfast and lunch so we began to depend on friends and neighbors for sustenance. That led to entirely different problems...

Hi, my name is Maggie and I'm a....

I've been called "bastard" and "illegitimate" and even "orphan," though the latter one is simply untrue, no matter how many times I wished it had been. You see, I grew up in a very strange environment. To call it "unstable" would be a gross understatement. Sometimes I had a dad and other times I didn't. Sometimes I had one and wished for a different one. I always had a mother and while I clung to her because she was one of only two people in my family I felt any connection to, I know now that I was clinging to a fictitious imagining of the woman I wish she would be; the woman I knew she could be because I had seen glimpses of that incredible woman every so often. Often enough to keep me hoping at least.

I have an older brother. Truth be told, I have several siblings - I'm unsure of how many really. But I grew up with one of them. His name is Calvin and he is less than 15 months older than I am. We were always very close growing up; difficult childhoods either bond siblings closer or wedge them farther apart. Ours bonded us. We certainly had our difficult times, but when push-came-to-shove, we were always united. He may not realize it, even now that we are adults, but he had a better childhood than I did. Though, maybe he believes the same about me. Perhaps there were things he endured in secret and kept them hidden as a means of protecting me, his baby sister. I wouldn't put it past him to do such a thing for my sake. But I sincerely hope that I had the worst childhood of the two of us, simply because I certainly suffered and there's no reason why both of us should have. One was more than enough.

Now back to the topic of discussion: being a bastard. Growing up, we were told about our father. We knew that our mother had two children from a previous marriage and that when her husband was killed, she gave her young babes up for adoption. We came later - her second chance family. She explained that when her heart had healed enough from losing her soul mate and their children, she knew that she wanted to have more children. But she wasn't yet ready to allow a man into her heart. So she approached a friend with a proposition. This friend was tall, thin, gloriously Scandinavian with beautiful features, and he had a very healthy lineage of ancestors who all lived to be quite old. He had the kind of genes my mother would feel good about passing onto her children. He agreed to give her a baby and after my brother was a few months old, he agreed to give my brother a sibling. That's where I come in. They had already agreed beforehand that he would have no involvement in our lives and in return, my mother would not ask him for any financial support. Whether he was happy with that arrangement in the end or wished he could be a part of our lives, my mother never said.

I would ask my mother repeatedly throughout my childhood to tell me about my father. I knew his name was Sal and he was tall with blue eyes and blond hair. He had a chiseled jaw and manly features. A kind face and big heart. My mother always spoke fondly of him.

When I was two years old, the man I would call "Dad" came into our lives. I don't remember his entrance into my world because I was still so young. But he was present in my earliest memories. Greg looked nothing like my real father, at least according to the description my mother gave. But Greg was nice and I believe that he loved us from the very beginning. He married my mother shortly after my 2nd birthday and began the paperwork for adoption right away. Once that was all complete, my brother and I were issued new birth certificates and new social security cards with his name on them. We were now a big, happy family with the same last name.

But I was still a bastard...