23andMe Results!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are my own and are not those of 23andMe.  Should you click any of the links below and purchase a product, I will be compensated in some form for your purchase.  

Happy Monday Friends! 

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and your week is off to a wonderful start! A while back, I talked about how Justin gave me a 23andMe DNA kit for Christmas and how I was super excited to find out more about myself and my ancestry.  Well, the results are in!

Turns out I am mostly British and Irish, which honestly did not surprise me.  Based on my skin, freckles and hair type, I was estimating that I would be Irish at least.  I was a bit surprised to find that I had French and German in my blood, but I thought that was pretty exciting.

Another part of the test is the Traits Portion.  This covers the different traits I would be likely/not likely to have based on my DNA makeup.  For most of the 81 traits they provided, it was accurate.  However, some of the traits they listed me as less likely to have I actually did have.  A perfect example is a Widow's Peak.  They listed that I would be unlikely to have one, but I do.  Interestingly enough, of the participants that have similar DNA to myself 78% did NOT have a Widow's Peak and 22% did.  So I was in the 22% minority in this area.  There were a few other traits that I showed that were predicted to not be present so it looks like I took some of the minority traits in some areas.  It was fun to see the different traits that I would likely to share with people sharing similar DNA structure as myself.  

Because Justin got me the Health + Ancestry part, the test also looked at some common medical issues and gave me some information about *potential* issues I could have based on my DNA type.  It also looked to see if I had any of the variants in my DNA that would indicate things like Alzheimer's or Macular Degeneration.  I am not going to share the results in great detail here, but I will say it was very informative and I am glad to know what things I could be predisposed for.

So that is the end of my results! I definitely think that doing the test was worth the price to  know more about myself and learning more about my heritage (especially with no known medical history).  

Want to check it out for yourself? 

Thinking about doing your Ancestry test too? Go to www.23andme.com and check out their DNA Genetic Test kit options! And if you decide to do one too, make sure to let me know! I'd love to hear about your experience too!

I'd love to hear from you!

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Disclosure: Some of the links in the post above are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. Read my full disclosure policy here.

23andMe

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are my own and are not those of 23andMe.  Should you click any of the links below and purchase a product, I will be compensated in some form for your purchase.  



Happy Tuesday Friends!

Have you heard of 23andMe? If you have not, it's a simple process where you order a kit, collect your own saliva and mail it to a CLIA-certified lab where they break down your DNA into manageable, understandable information.  Seems rather simple, right?

I am excited to say that my wonderful husband purchased the Health + Ancestry Kit for me as a Christmas gift.  To be honest, out of all of the things I asked for this Christmas, this is the one item I was really hoping to receive.  Being adopted, I often wonder "who am I?".  Where do I come from? What is my ancestry? So by asking for and receiving this gift, I am able to answer a few of those questions {even at a superficial level}.

So what did I think about the initial process? I'll be honest, I did not mail out my tube until four days after Christmas.  In order to get the saliva sample, you have to have not had food or drink for at least thirty minutes.  And every time I remembered I wanted to mail it in, I had either eaten something or taken a drink.  So finally that day, I set a time for 30 minutes and made sure that I did not eat or drink during that time.

Spitting into the tube is rather simple {I mean, look at the pictures on the box - they explain it step-by-step with pictures}.  You just need to fill the tube until the line then close it up and package it up to mail.

Once I got the tube packaged up and ready to go, I walked the package out to the mail box and waited for it to be picked up.  I was a bit worried that my spit would freeze as Michigan is basically an ice cube and well below freezing, but the tube does have stabilizing solution to protect your saliva.

Within 24 hours of the tube being mailed, 23andMe, provided a status about my package through this nice status bar.  I appreciate that I can receive regular updates about the process and what I can expect throughout the process.

You can also take some of their many surveys which help them collect data about human nature and your habits.  I have been enjoying answering a few of their surveys and will likely take time to finish all of them between now and the time my results come back in the mail.

So the next step is for me to just wait! I am curious to see where I hail from and what health information they can give me based on my DNA.  I will be sure to share with everyone my results once they come back in the mail!

Want to check it out for yourself? 

Thinking about doing your Ancestry test too? Go to www.23andme.com and check out their DNA Genetic Test kit options! And if you decide to do one too, make sure to let me know! I'd love to hear about your experience too!

And check back in a little bit to see my results! I cannot wait to see where I "hail" from! 

I'd love to hear from you!

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

Disclosure: Some of the links in the post above are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. Read my full disclosure policy here.

A Bit Nervous

This is a post that I started yesterday but never finished...Sorry that this is to text heavy.

Good Morning All, I trust your Monday is going well.  Today's post is going to be a bit of an emotional one as I am starting to address finding my birth parents again.  That, and I hurt my leg and walking around is proving to be rather difficult for me right now.  But more on that later.

I mentioned back in November that I was going to put the search to find my birth parents on hold because of the Holidays and not wanting to put that type of pressure on myself or them.  Well the Holidays have come and gone and it seems that I keep finding myself procrastinating on contacting them.

I have to be honest a say that I am scared.  I am scared to meet them. I am scared they won't want to meet me. I am scared that I have siblings. I am scared that cancer will run in my family.  I am just plain old scared. It seems like finding your birth parents and meeting them would be something of great excitement, but there are so many more emotions that go into them than you would ever guess.

Fear
Excitement
Dread
Love
Joy
Hate
Peace
Rest
Calm

I think, honestly, if I had to define the thing that scares me the most is how my life will change.  I am afraid of what will happen when I meet them, how I will change, how they will change, how my relationship with my mom will change and how my relationship with my husband will change.

Being adopted has always been a part of my life, but I have never felt that it defined who I was.  I look like my adoptive parents, I look like my mom's whole family and every.single.person in my family has accepted me as one of their own.  So for me to say that being adopted has defined me, it would be a lie.  It is a part of who I am, just like I have brown hair and hazel eyes.  It is part of the construction but is not who I am.  But pursuing this has taken something that was just part of me and has made it the biggest part of me.  And that scares me.

While searching for a picture of something that could potential depict what adoption feels or looks like, I came across this picture:

It just reminded me that above and beyond all of the things I am afraid of, my birth parents put me first.  They made the decision to give me what they felt would be the best opportunity even though it was probably a very difficult decision.  This reminded me that no matter how scary things are, they loved me enough to give me another life.

I guess we shall see what happens, huh?

Adoption Update Part II

Hello!

I'm sorry for my lack of updates on the adoption story.  Life has been rather hectic and it has been somewhat put on the back burner, until a few weeks ago.  My mom has some friends that live in Massachusetts, so she decided to give them a call to see if they can dig up any information for me.  And what they found was surprising.

Lorraine, my mom's friend, was able to contact someone with some information regarding the last known location of my birth parents and it turns out that they are still living in Massachsetts and from what I can tell, they eventually got married!

It's such a weird feeling to know that my birth parents ended up getting married after all.  The picture I posted has the blue bars on it because I have blocked out the phone number and address. 

So what does this mean? Well, it means that I have an address and phone number of where my birth parents can potentially be reached.  Really, the next step would be for me to either write them a letter or give them a call to tell them that I am out there and I am looking for them.  But that is not what I am going to do.

I want to wait until Thanksgiving and Christmas are over.  The last thing I need to do is try to contact them and have them reject me during the holidays and forever associate that rejection with Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Plus, I do not think it would be fair for me to spring such a big thing on them right before the holidays.

So the plan for now is to just wait.  Wait for the new year, and wait until I am 100% sure I want to talk to them.  

Adoption Update

Happy Friday Everyone! I hope that everyone had a wonderful week and has an exciting weekend planned.

I wanted to give everyone a bit of an update on the search for my birth parents.  Since my last post, I have had several discussions with my mom and have began doing some major research on the processes on looking for my birth parents.

Not too long after my last post, my mom gave me a picture of my birth parents.

I wish it was a better quality picture, but it's the best one that I have.  This is my birth parents, Cheryl and Tom, two weeks after I was born.  Pretty neat picture huh? I think I look a lot like Cheryl, but the majority of people that have seen this picture, think I look like Tom.  We shall see!

Last week, I spent a great deal of time online researching the process necessary to starting my search.  Because my adoption was a bit different from most adoptions (i.e. my birth parents selected my adoptive parents) the process is a bit different.  In standard adoptions, the adoptee does not have a name for either birth parent, and I've been fortunate enough to have the name of both of  my parents.

In my research, I discovered that in the state of Massachusetts, all adoptions files are closed even if the adoption is open or semi-open.  This means, I would have to get in touch with the person in charge of the adoption paperwork and ask to get the file open.  Seems like a lot of work to me, but if that is what I have to do, then that is what I will do.

Another neat thing I found in my research is this article: Searchinig for Birth Relatives.
The article talks about all of the things you need to do to be prepared to begin your search.  If you are thinking about finding your birth parents, this is a good website to check out!

Another thing I did was join Adoption Registry Connect.  This is a site where you can post an "ad" about yourself and who you are looking for.  If you are intersted in seeing my advertisement, you can check it out: here.  The purpose of this post is in the off chance that my birth parents would see it and get in contact with me through that means.

That is all I have for now regarding the adoption story.  If you have any questions, please do not hesistate to contact me through my blog!

 

My Adoption Story

In the last 3 months, I have had at least 25 different people ask me if I was ever going to find my birth parents.  This question used to annoy the heck out of me, but for some reason, it seemed more like a gentle push toward beginning this new adventure.

I want to preface this with the fact that I have always known that I was adopted and it has never been a secret that my parents kept from me. 

 

These are my parents, Tim and Teri.  As you can see from the picture of my mom and I, I was adopted at a very young age.  In fact, they had worked out the logistics of my adoption before I was even born!

Last week, my mom and I sat down and talked about the details that went into adopting me and she said it was absolute chaos, but that she loved every minute of it.  My mom and dad tried for 7 years to have a baby and nothing happened.  She said that they tried everything from in vitro to hormone therapy and nothing worked.  When I asked her what she thought was the cause, she attributed the infertility to her missing ovary.  See, when my mom was in her 20s, they found a very large ovarian cyst, which ended up completely damaging the ovary.  As a result of this, she was only releasing an egg once every other month.

Well, in early 1989 my mom and dad moved back to Michigan from Massachusetts, so my dad could work with my grandpa at grandpa's business.  They got a new home, got everything settled, and that was when things had changed.  My mom received a phone call from her friend, Beverly, and Beverly told her that she knew of a young woman that was pregnant and was considering adoption as an option.  My mom was so excited, that she called my dad to tell him the good news.  Their conversation went something like this:

Mom: "I have some wonderful news Tim!"

Dad: "So do I! What is your wonderful news?"

Mom: "Beverly knows someone that is giving their baby up for adoption"

Dad: "Oh how wonderful! ...(Insert long conversation about the baby)... I got offered a really great job in Texas and I want to take the offer"

My mom and dad applied to be a prospective couple to adopt the baby, and were one of five couples that were in the running to adopt.  Fortunately for them (and me), my birth parents selected them to be the adoptive parents! They chose my parents because they wanted a family where the mom could be at home with the baby, and my parents could provide that type of lifestyle for me.

Now when you are selected to become adoptive parents, you must go through a screening process, and they do an in-home study to make sure everything is safe for the baby.  This became difficult for my parents because they were to move to Texas in early May 1989.  Unfortunately, right before they left my mom's grandmother Whittaker passed away and it was really difficult for her.  They attended her funeral and moved all of their things to Texas. 

The week after they moved to Texas, Beverly called my mom and said that I had been born.  My mom was so overjoyed at the news and was speedily getting the house ready my arrival.  However, three days after I had been born, my parents had not heard anything from the adoption agency.  My mom said that after a week had passed, she thought that the birth parents had decided to keep the baby and that she had closed the door to the nursery and mourned.  She mourned not only for the loss of a child, but for the loss of her grandmother.

What she did not know, however, is that in Massachusetts, the birth parents cannot sign the paperwork for three days.  This gives them a chance to really think about the decision to give the baby up for adoption.  On her 31st birthday, two weeks after I was born, my mom received a phone call from the adoption agency saying that she could come pick up their little girl.

And that is where my story begins.

I am telling you this story because I have decided to start the search for my birth parents and I want to share this journey with you in the hopes that someone else out there that has been adopted can take comfort in knowing that they are not alone.  As this story unfolds, I will begin to fill you in on the steps I must take and the processes necessary to hopefully find my birth parents.