Met my sister today. Almost 64 years after her birth

[racer72]

A few years ago I did one of the DNA tests. The results game back and through one of the genealogy websites, I have a lot more folks related to me than I thought. Most were distant cousins. Earlier this year I received an email about a new match. It stated this person was a very close relative, uncle, aunt, grand parent, niece, nephew or 1/2 sibling. After some investigating, and my wife spending many hours of on research, she is my half sister. We have the same father. I was born October of 1956, she was born 2 months later. It appears my father got a little side action after my mother became pregnant with me.

Now that I am retired my wife thought we should meet. As soon as I saw her she looked awful familiar even though I have never seen a picture of her. We talked for about 3 hours, I showed her some pictures of our father and our 6 other siblings. She also has 6 other siblings from her birth mother. She has made contact a sister from her mother and hopes to meet some other relatives she didn’t know she had. I am hoping to have a family get together this spring with my sibs so she can meet the rest of her family.

[Ranch_Dip]

Congratulations. May COVID not spoil your get together plans.

[DorkVader]

Hey, that’s really nice.
Like Ranch Dip, I hope everything goes well with your plans.

[Cazzle]

Congratulations! It’s wonderful to see that you’re open to connecting with her. The DNA Genealogy forums are full of people lamenting their biological relatives unwillingness to accept them. It’s really nice to know that’s not how your sister’s story goes.

All the best for your meet-up!

[LSLGuy]

Excellent story. Glad to hear its started out well.

Here’s a post from another thread that mentions similar ideas, some of which worked out well and others not.

@Ca3799

Adding genetic information to family genealogic histories can lead to surprises or unusual situations. Lots of folks have found out that, for example, they have a sibling who is only a half-sibling, or that their sibling is actually the child of an older sibling or cousin so-and-so, or that they were not genetically related to their parents for whatever reason, etc.

I have a coworker who recently found out that her deceased brother may have fathered a child when he was in high school through a match on her DNA kit results.
Or maybe it was that other brother… but the age difference would have been criminal…
She’s mulling the information now and hasn’t decided how to handle the situation.

Another coworker who was adopted used a DNA company kit in the hopes of identifying and finding out about her biologic family.
About 2-3 years after this coworker created her account she received an in-website contact from a man also in the same database who said there must be an error because they were closely matched. She explained that she was adopted and what she knew about the circumstances of her adoption. She never heard from the man again and did not pursue contact with him again herself either- which was the whole point of her using the DNA kit inn the first place- to find biological relatives.

[iamthewalrus_3]

That’s cool. My mom recently connected with a half-sister at almost 70. I don’t think they’ve met in person, but she’s been on a few video calls with us.