‘Each person is part of a deep kinship system. Like an endless chain, the genetic code connects us with our ancestors and influences our life and destiny’
Families are more than just DNA. I know this, but the point I’m wanting to make here is that it’s not just about the ‘Donor’ in a donor conceived situation. I am an only child, was an only grandchild and I have no cousins. I only ever met one Grandparent, my Mums Mother and she died 20 years ago. I have always had a blank space where my paternal family tree should be as my Dad was estranged from his family – it wasn’t spoken about. I didn’t ask.
Discovering I am donor conceived also means discovering a whole new ancestral line. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandparents, siblings? I don’t have these family members- my blood relatives alive consist of my Mum and her sister and a few of their cousins.
But I am not part of my donors family am I? Despite the genetic links. Despite the shared ancestors. I have no right to stake claim on these people. They are strangers to me. They don’t know I exist.
Having always had a blank space on my paternal side of the family tree surely I can be ok with it STILL being blank? I’ve asked myself this many times. 40 years of being an only child, 40 years of having no cousins. Only ever having one Grandparent. That’s just the way it is.
It feels wrong to me though. To be severed from my family tree at the roots. The advances in DNA technology today means that I have learned stuff about my paternal line, but for now it remains names on a page. Snippets of family journeys, of births, marriages and deaths…
My parents donor holds the key to how this plays out from here. He gets to choose. He gets to reject. That’s a big cross to bear. I wonder if he’s ever thought about his donation like this?
I’ve just been reading up on a new book to add to my vast tower of emotional support books. Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton touches brilliantly on a point I wanted to explore around WHY knowing the donor is important to me. After all, I already had a Dad, although imperfect, and good friends and a small but incredible family… Shouldn’t I stop dwelling on the past and get on with life?
As Newton puts it,
“The alchemy between our genes and our individuality is a mystery we keep trying to solve”
She talks about the fact that in terms of DNA, we are no more related to most of our ancestors than we are to the people around us on a train or at the supermarket yet paradoxically without each of the people who came before, who contributed to the genes that ultimately contributed to ours, we wouldn’t exist as we do now. You only have to look in the mirror to see that. This point still blows my mind despite its simplicity!
My search is not rose tinted… I have spoken to people who do not get on with or have been rejected by biological parents or siblings and do not have them in their life. I have met someone who is the product of rape and people that have been the victims of abuse or narcissistic behaviour from biological family. For some of these people I am seeking out the very connection they work daily to sever, forget or reframe.
I am also aware that,
- I likely share more interests and beliefs with my friends than with many people whose genetics overlap with mine
- Families need not be bound by blood and also that having a blood relationship is no guarantee of affinity
So what is it I am hoping to find? Wired Magazine describes it brilliantly in their review of this book so I borrow that here: I’m on a quest to reconcile the complicated terrain of familial relationships with the simple fact of descendancy.
So I know I am opening up a Pandora’s box but it is in its very nature a reconciliation. Wondering about my origins doesn’t devalue what I already had and knew in my life, I am not searching for greener pastures or a new Father.. But it’s still an exploration I feel I have a right to.
I am experiencing first hand the transformational power that this obsession with ancestors opens up. The gift it has given me, new ways to see myself, (and while this is all still fresh and I am most definitely at the pointy end of this experience), for that I am truly grateful.
The fragile beauty and heart-stopping pain within Anonhi’s (formerly known as Antony Hegarty) 2005 album ‘I am a Bird Now’, is the closest way I can convey the deep emotion and feelings of loss I feel when I think about the possibility of being someone’s sister. I cannot listen to “Hope There’s Someone” and “You Are My Sister” without tears prickling my eyes and soaking my cheeks.
The day after my Ancestry.com results came through I received notification from the Donor Concieved Register. The lab at Kings College University had found someone who potentially shared the same donor and wanted my Mother to submit her DNA to help with the analysis. Given I had no matches closer than a 3rd/4th cousin on Ancestry I was not expecting THIS!
My Mum agreed and we set the ball rolling. I prepared myself for a 5 or 6 week wait for confirmation.. I tried not to get my hopes up but equally I was quietly confident knowing how the DNA matching worked on Ancestry- I only shared 4% dna with the 3rd/4th cousin match so clearly it’s a bigger percentage for a prestigious university lab to write that basically (in so many words) that they may have found a half sibling?!
Six weeks passed, I’d prepared for this wait but now I began to unravel as the weeks ran from 7, 8, 9 and 10. I must have been checking my emails 4 times an hour by now. I had the coping strategies to manage my emotional state but my ability to deal with the wait was wearing thin. I was beginning to be quite unwell. The report finally came through on a Friday afternoon after some persistent chasing of the ‘specialist case’ manager directly..
‘…by putting your Mother’s DNA in with the other persons DNA on the register, the link has now gone away..’
And just like that 10 weeks of hope and anticipation dashed. I didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense! That’s not how it works, surely? I asked for an explanation obviously. It’s too long and complicated to write here, but bottom line is they use different techniques to the commercial DNA sites and their technique is not ideal for discovering siblings… (the official partner lab for the Donor Conceived Register…)
I know there’s an element of ‘wanting what you don’t have’ in this tale. But oh my goodness this really hurts. I’d accepted I was an only child, but to have this possibility of a half sibling dangled so temptingly close then torn away again?
It’s a raw emotion that I’m still recovering from.
An experience I still struggle to get my head around.
DC people often state the discovery of half siblings to be the silver lining to this often distressing and confusing revelation. I have my DNA on a handful of international DNA sites, so I have many bases covered but the truth is I may never know IF I have siblings or how many there are for sure. The time period following Black Friday and Christmas cut price deals on DNA kits has been nick-named Sibling-Season in the DC community as the period each year where the databases are flooded with new DNA and the next cohort of family secrets are most likely revealed. . .
So I will live with the echo of this pain, with hope rising and falling with each new wave of DNA kits, waiting, waiting for someone to maybe say that I am their sister.
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