My Sister And I Finally Meet, 50 Plus Years Later – Jim Weaver’s DNA Stuff
It took a while but it has finally happened… the sister I found through my DNA test and I finally met face to face this past weekend, and it was awesome.
If you have been following along with this DNA saga then you already know some of this stuff, but if you are just finding the story, let's get you caught up.
About a year ago, my wife told me that she was going to get me a DNA testing kit since I had expressed an interest in doing it to try to find some medical background on myself. The only bad thing in my life about being adopted as a baby was not knowing any family medical history. Whereas most people have some idea if cancer or heart disease run in their family, I was clueless. So, we got the test from 23 and Me and sent it in. Several weeks later, I get the results back and learned that I have a half-sister that has been looking for me for a year after finding out I existed through her own research.
My half-sister’s name is Renee. She lives in California, and she is about a year older than I am. We are from the same mother but different fathers, and we were both put up for adoption in the early 60's.
That's the quick update. Renee has a son that lives in Houston and had been planning a trip to the Lone Star State for quite a while and finally was able to git 'er done. Toward the end of her trip, it was our turn to meet for the first time in our lives, and it was glorious.
My wife was there, of course, my chatterbox mom (love you mom) was there, and two of my kids, Tyler and Jesse, were also able to meet their brand new aunt this past weekend.
We had a spectacular time catching up on each other's lives, loves, kids and jobs. The crazy thing is how many places in the Houston area we both frequented as teens and adults, and how close we were and didn't know it. Did we ever run into each other, who knows? We look quite a bit alike and have some eerily similar mannerisms.
It was a lot of fun getting to know my sister and I can't wait to meet her son and his family, and introduce Renee to more of my brood. I'm sure we have many more great stories to share.
Birth Mother Update: Yes, I know who she is, yes, we are friends on Facebook, and yes, I do hope to meet her in the very near future as well.
As I explained in detail in an earlier edition of this story (see links below), I'm pretty disappointed in one thing about my information obtained from 23 and Me, and that is the lack of Native American DNA to pull from in their database. While I may or may not have any in me, I know my wife does because of her father was close to full-blood, and her DNA test showed no Native American. WRONG! Therefore, I don't fully trust the findings of the first test. Through my wife's research, it appears that none of these DNA testing companies have very much in the way on Native American information. I'm not sure why that is at this time but let's hope that improves in the future.
Nevertheless, let's go again shall we, this time with Ancestry.com. It will be fascinating to compare the information between the two services. I probably won't be so lucky as to find another close relative but that's ok, this is science, and it's fascinating!
If you're just tuning in on this series and would like to read more, click on the links below:
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