Happy Fathers Day

So again it's been nearly 6 months since my last update.  I wish I could come here and write some exciting happy uplifting news about my journey... but I've got nothing.

I sent those letters off I mentioned last time, and have never got any kind of response or reply. I guess they have no need or want for an extra family member. I've been trying to make connections with people who may be related but it's getting nowhere. 

Unless you are or have ever been in my shoes facing a similar situation, it's hard to get an understanding of this need I have to find birth family and to be accepted in their lives. It doesn't matter that I have my own family now and that I have great adoptive family and that I have great friends around me.. none of that will ever heal that break that is within me from not knowing and not being accepted by birth family. I've literally had someone close say "screw them...we are your family.. forget about them"!! It doesn't work like that.  I think I've got better at masking the hurt from those close. Or maybe I'm just more accepting of the rejection as I get older.

But I am feeling that I'm close to that point of saying, well I tried! I've put myself out there...made myself vulnerable.. opened myself up and have straight out asked for acceptance. Is there anything more I can do. Do I give up and accept defeat. I probably should. I probably can't!

It breaks my heart every time I read a happy reunion story, or how others are finding all these parents/siblings/ cousins that are so pleased to welcome a new found family member. I've had one, a 3rd cousin who has been super supportive and who makes an effort to keep in touch. But I've had a birth mother, birth sisters, numerous 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins and Aunts/Uncles that have either rejected me or just dismissed me like yesterday's news.  I'm nothing to them. That hurts!

And to close, today marks the first day of Spring in Australia. The first day of new beginnings. The first day of fresh hope. And also it marks Fathers Day. So to my dad Dennis, I wish a Happy Fathers Day.  And to my birthfather, wherever and whoever he may be, I also wish a Happy Fathers Day.

Myriad of Emotions

I like to try and update here as often as I can, even when there has been no further developments or breakthroughs. I like to be able to vent and offload, possibly just to myself, of the hopes and frustrations I feel daily. But I am conscious of it sounding like I'm a miserable sad depressed person with this obsession of knowing my heritage.

My life is generally happy. I try to keep busy. I enjoy hanging out with family and friends. I laugh. I relax. But yes, I also cry, at times for no apparent reason. I retreat into a shell. I get brave. I get scared. I can not say any of these emotions and reactions are specifically 'adoption' related but I do feel for me personally that that is where a lot of it comes from.

Finding answers and developing relationships around my adoption, is always in my thoughts. I've often wondered... where is the ending? When do I say, enough is enough?

If I was to find my birthfather, alive and accepting of me, and we grew a friendship, what would I do then? Of course I would totally love getting to know him, but it's hard to explain. It's nearly like this unknown is all I've ever known and if it then became known, then what would I do. I'd be lost. Either way, I'm still pursuing the answers I need.

So where am I at today with DNA and family. My DNA matches have now risen to 282 4th cousin or closer matches. Crazy to think when I first took the DNA test just over 2 years ago it was at 44. None of the newer matches have been particularly high but I've messaged a couple to work out connections. Most are 3rd or 4th cousins so they haven't had a lot of information about Bernie, my potential birthfather.

I've spoken to Bernies nephew M. Sadly he doesn't have a much to tell me about Bernie. Just last week I posted a letter to him with one included for Lenny, just to say hi and to let them know how pleased I am to find an uncle and a 1st cousin.

My biggest wish now is to see a photo of Bernie but there doesn't seem to be any in existence but I will continue to persevere.

I am hoping I can begin to establish a kinship with them, but that is completely their choice. I wait in hope.

There's been no contact with birth mother or birth sisters. I reached out to the sisters just before Christmas but theres been nothing in return. It hurts but it's what they want. Nothing I can do about it.

But in good news, I do hear regularly from my 3rd cousin on my maternal side. He will often ring just to see how me and my family are doing. He will call me cuz and says he loves me. He makes an effort and he welcomes me as family. In fact we are meeting up again in a month and I'm so looking forward to it. He is family!

DNA results are in...

Nearly 3 months ago I surfaced from the depths of uncertainty and took a deep breath.. a gasp actually, as my hopes became clearer.

The DNA results for L (my potential birthfather) came in.

"He is NOT your father!!"

Whilst his DNA does match with mine, and quite highly, it's not high enough to put him in the 'parent' category.  The results indicate that he is very likely to be an uncle, so it seems that L's late brother Bernie must be my birthfather.

I got my answers... well partly. More so , I know who is definately not my father, and now left with knowing who is probably my father but no way of getting that 100% guarantee.  And he is passed away. No spouse ever, and no known children so noone closer then uncle or cousin to get to know.

It's another crushing blow to me as the realization hits me that I'm not ever going to get to meet my birth father. 

I want to know more about Bernie.. who was he, what was he like? Do I look like him. I ask around with some of these cousins but noone seems to know a lot about him... noone has photos.. noone knows when or where he passed away.

I so dearly would love to develop a kinship with Lenny and his family.  They all appear to be friendly and open but in all honesty I'm not feeling that I'm wanted or that i will ever be a part of their extended family. The need to be welcomed and acknowledged in the family I was born from is so strong.  I even had another attempt to reach out to my birth sisters after a number of years of giving them time and space. They are still not ready to deal with me in their life.. I don't think they ever will be. One just ignores and the other does a complete block on any contact. Why? Why is it so hard to accept that I exist.

DNA in progress

How am I feeling?

Excited! Nervous! Anxious! Scared! Hopeful!

A bit like when you're looking through a fogged up window, then you turn the demisters on. What you are looking at slowly starts to become clearer.

A bit like when you've jumped off a cliff into the water and you're making your way to the surface..breath is held.. just about to break through that last layer of water knowing as soon as you do you will breathe easier..you will see clearer.

The closest I've ever been....sample processing!!

I just want my answers. 

I just want to know if he is the one! And if he is, I need to know does he accept me. 

This unknown and this never ending void and uncertainty that constantly surrounds me can become so unbearable. I know I'm not my usual happy self lately because of this.

Every day that passes is a day less that could potentially be spent getting to know him.

Everyone in this world is different. Everyone acts different and everyone reacts different, to situations. There's no right and theres no wrong.. its just as it is.

I often think if I was approached out of the blue by someone saying I think you might be my aunty or my sister or my mother or my cousin, I'd be busting at the seams to work out how. I'd want to know all about them and would continue to develop a friendship, a kinship. Well thats how I'd hope I would react. 

Maybe thats just the idealistic 'in a perfect world' scene.  

But who lives in a perfect world?? What is perfect?

Realistically, if I actually sit and think about it, there isn't a lot of families where everyone gets along with everyone, or that all communicate with each other regularly, be it daily., weekly, monthly or even yearly.  Sure everyone will gather together at funerals and weddings (if you're invited) and we're all 'friends' with family on facebook but in all honesty how many people ring them up just to say hi how you doing..  or pop around for a coffee or a beer?

Putting the adoption part of it to the side for a moment and thinking about my own cousins for example, I can remember as kids we'd all get together over the Christmas holidays at the grandparents house. But as we grow up, move away, have families of our own.. we all start to have our own lives and drift apart. 

I have cousins that live less then 30 minutes away but it had been probanly 20 years since I had seen or spoken to most of them.. and what made us reconnect if not only briefly a few months ago... a funeral! A first cousin who was only 50 that passed from cancer and I  didnt even know until 2 days after she passed. 

That was really tough! 

Maybe its a case of not appreciating what you have got till its gone; taking life..people.. for granted! Maybe we should all reach out to family more often, not just at certain occasions. And not just family..,everyone! 

Life is short.. tell those you love that you love them! 

Make sure those that are important to you know they are.

So back to my journey. 

Again its been way too long since I last updated. I've started to a few times, then just couldn't find the words. I've had lots I want to say and express, I've had multitudes of emotions, but I've struggled to put it on paper. I have also been mindful of what I say so as not to hurt or upset anyone. But this is my page, my blog. Its meant to be an honest and open record of events and emotions that I experience.

So, if you recall from my last post, I had a close cousin match appear on my ancestry dna matches and I had tried to reach out to him. His match started my lead to this other gentleman, I'll refer to as LM, being a possible candidate of being my birthfather. After tracking down and speaking to a couple of other cousins of my close dna match, they agreed to submit a dna sample as well to help determine if we were on the right path. When their results came in it showed them as an even higher match then my first. 

We are definitely on the right track. More research and many hours later, I feel we are getting closer. We narrow it down to one of 3 brothers. One passed away before I was even a twinkle in anyones eye..rules him out. The other passed 20 odd years ago, with no known children so he remains a possibility but we cant test to be sure. This leaves LM as our only option to test with.

I find out his sons name, M, and his ex-wifes. I get an address and phone number for them. I sit on it. How do I possibly present myself to these people as a possible immediate member of their family. My past experience with reaching out to birth parent and birth sibling hasn't exactly gone down too well.. makes me nervous to try again. But I know I cant leave it too long..like I said earlier, life is short!

A little while later, its February 5th.. my birthday. and that afternoon I get a wonderful surprise! Another 2 high matches appear on my dna results. Laurie and Leigh.

Straight away I message them to say I'd love to find how we are connected. A couple weeks later I get a reply and I discover they are the grandsons of one of LM's sisters. They don't have a great lof of info on their grandmothers family but they are super excited and pleased to welcome me as a cousin! Finally some success and some happy news, and we still now continue to keep in touch as my journey continues. With some new found courage and determination I decide I need to make this phone call to M, the son of LM, my potential half brother.

My hearts racing, palms are sweaty. March 2018, I ring! 

His elderly mother answers who starts to take down my contact details but before she finished he arrived home and took the call.

I briefly explain who I am and my situation, then I gently drop the bombshell that I think his father may be my father too! He kinda giggles at that thought and says nah it wouldn't be my dad..then calls out to his mum and asks 'when did you and dad split up'? She answers nonchalantly, ' over 40 years ago!!'. I said I'm 43! He says ' wow ok.. hmmm yeah maybe huh!' I explain more how my dna matches have led me to believe my father either has to be LM or LM's late brother. I say the only way to 100% confirm which one is if he or LM were willing to do a dna test which I understand is a huge thing to ask of anyone. He asks a little more about who my birthmother is and if I could send him any photos of her, so when he next sees his dad he can ask him about it, and to ring him back in a few days. When I ring back, M explains that as his dad is deaf communication can be a little difficult but he tried to explain as best he could. It didn't spark any memories with LM but Im not sure how much or what he understood of what M was saying to him. M says that he is willing to go ahead with getting dna anyway, with the help from his own son, so that we can all know for certain if I am a daughter of LM.

Whilst M seemed ok to me over the phone, I still couldn't help but sense some trepidation from him. I guess it is understandable, here I am just announcing myself as possible family from out of the blue, I cant blame him for being cautious and careful. Im not after anything..just to know who the man is that helped create me, and to know my blood family.

I spent many sleepless nights and shed many tears privately as I started to believe I may soon know who my birthfather is, but also scared that I may yet again be rejected. It took a little longer than I hoped, for their own reasons, till they got around to getting a dna sample from LM but after many long months, I can now finally say the dna sample of LM has been submitted to the dna lab...

 ..and as I write this today it is in the 'Sample Processing' stage. 

They say it can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months for results to be ready.

So thats where im up to today.. waiting!

And living in hope.

And just in interests sake, when i first submitted my dna sample back in October 2016, nearly 2 years ago, it first showed 44 x 4th cousin or closer matches.. today it stands at 212!!! 

...

The wonders of DNA!

Here's hoping that my next post is soon, and is announcinng some great positive news!

DNA Doesn't Lie

So its been quite some time again since my last post..in fact 10 months! At this point I'm still yet to know for certain who my birthfather is... but I feel its getting closer.

One thing with taking on this challenge is that you become quite determined to leave no stone unturned and I do so many investigative google searches and facebook searches and birth death marriage searches... so many notes and names and dates scribbled... sometimes I think I know more info on peoples history and family tree then they themselves do.

It can seem a little invasive..especially when I reach out to them saying 'I believe I'm related to you / your cousin / your aunty / your grandparent etc'... but yet cant explain exactly how. I'm lucky though because majority of people that I have approached have been good about it.. giving me names or locations of people that become another link in the chain...connecting me a little closer.

Before I get more into where I'm up to today, a follow up from what I mentioned in my last post 10 months ago. The daughter of the second R Paton was going to do a dna test.. I haven't heard any more on this so can just assume she's decided not to or has forgot. Also I messaged the other Robert that a friend knew but again it was never answered. I've not dwelt on this though because I'm now more focussed on researching the info that I get from my dna results on ancestry.com rather then the word of a woman (my birthmother) thats been proven to lie/deny on many things.

So when I first got my dna results there was 44 x 4th cousin or closer matches.

As of today I have 144!!

As explained in my previous post many matches I can conect to my bm side of the family..the ones I can't connect I can only assume belong on my birthfathers side although not always the case. And even knowing or assuming them matches to be paternal it's still very tricky to work out just where we might connect. It often means going back 3..4.. even 5 generations, then going across to their siblings and back down the generations... the possibilities seem endless sometimes.

It's like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.. or a tiny speck of chromosome in an olympic sized gene pool!!

So, about May last year a new match popped up on my dna matches... and it was the highest I'd had... according to Ancestry.com a possible 1st or 2nd cousin!

This is a huge step forward. After so many dead ends and brick walls this was a breakthrough.


The graphs below shows in simple terms what the centimorgan and DNA segment numbers can indicate of a relationship and how that relationship is connected to you.

I started to get excited even allowing myself to think that just maybe by sundown this day I'd know who my biological father was. It'll be pretty easy to work that out now having a first or second cousin to work from. How wrong I was. Here I am 8 months later and still not quite cracked it. Lets call this match JC. I messaged JC via ancestry and then found him on facebook and messaged him but my messages go unseen.....this is killing me.


Talk to me!! You are the link to solving my mystery..don't you realise how important this is!!


I'm getting frustrated... desperate times call for desperate measures. So from his facebook page I'm able to determine who his mother is. I message her just asking her to get JC to check and answer my message to him. She asks is there something she can help with? So with shaky fingers I tell her the back story. Her sons dna matches up with mine and I want to find out how...through who??

Without publishing too much of their family's private personal lives on here.. I'll just say that I, with the most awesome search angel... researcher and friend, M have pretty much narrowed it down to JCs fathers side... and we are quite sure then to JCs fathers mothers side! We are close. We have a possible candidate but I'm holding myself back from getting too excited. I've been here before to only have it all crumble beneath me. But its hard not to get excited as well. Its all adding up... JC's Great Grandparent is the same person as my potential grandparent.

We have his name.. he's elderly and possibly not in the best health. Hes deaf and so verbal communication is difficult. He's in a nursing home 'in Sydney'.. have a possible suburb. He has a son that would know nothing of me. He has an ex-wife that he is still friends with but would know nothing of me. He may....or may not be my father!! How do I approach him or his family without the risk of totally disrupting their lives. This feels so much more scary and gut churning then it did the first time. Maybe because intuitively I feel this could be the one!! I've talked with a potential first cousin who agrees I could be on the right track!! I just need to keep chipping away at the info I've been given and see if I can strike gold!!

Lets hope its not too long till I update with some good news!!! 

Discovering my Ethnicity

I've been wanting to add an entry for a few weeks now but with no exciting news to tell I wasn't sure if I should. But this blog is not just about keeping track of each step forward and the many push backs, its also a place to just unload for me.

Some people may think I obsess over this adoption stuff..maybe I do. But its something that never goes away.. its never far from my thoughts.

  

 I still find it really hard to deal with and accept that my own birthmother refuses to have me any part of her life. What did I ever do to deserve that kind of treatment. Wasn't I good enough..am I still not good enough?? And why do my sisters refuse to accept me?




I read so many reunion stories and I know there are many many failed reunions and many more second rejections, but there are also many happy reunions and welcoming families. Why cant mine be one of them?

I know I was 'lucky' to be put into a good family but there's still that underlying hurt and ache that not many people could understand. There are often days that I do just sit and cry about it.

Its a sadness; an anger, an emptiness, and a loneliness even when I'm in a room full of people.

I don't know if it will ever go away. Has the irreparable damage been done?

I wonder even if they were to make contact today, would these feelings change? I could only hope so.

I know I have lots of things to be thankful for, and I am; my family..my friends. But just understand there are times when I just retreat, when I seem pre-occupied and go within myself, sometimes even subconsciously.

So anyway, I sent my dna sample off to Ancestry.com  late last year and a few weeks later I got results. The first thing I see from my results are my ethnicity origins.

From tracing my birthmothers family tree back to the 1700s I knew I had Irish and German in me but was clueless as to what I had from my birthfather. Its always made a good guessing competition as I've had people say to me that they can see everything from Maori.. to Aboriginal.. to Italian.
Well this answers it..

Im 41% Great British

40% Irish

And 15% Europe East which includes areas such as Poland, Russia, Latvia and German

And 4% of other trace regions.

So there you go. Predominantly I'm British and Irish, there's no Kiwi or Koori in me!

I'm guessing the British must be from my birthfathers side.

     

As well as giving me my ethnicity information the DNA test also shows any dna matches I have with other people that have done their test with Ancestry. When I first got these results there was about 44 matches of 4th cousin or closer...today its up to 68 matches.

I am very lucky and very grateful that I have a couple of ladies that are helping me decipher it all because I'm at a total loss as to how to read the results and compare family trees etc.

There's also a number of really good facebook groups that are very helpful and supportive when dealing with dna.

So from these matches I've emailed and conversed with a couple of 3rd cousins, all on my mothers side. Its a tricky and confusing process, well for me it is, to find the link as to where these people are on my family tree. With the assistance of my helpers we've been able to determine most to be on the birthmothers side. By law of elimination I can only assume the matches that we cant find the connection to are then branches on my birthfathers side.. but there are so many variables and broken connections its a really really difficult process. I thank my 2 helpers immensely for putting in many hours to try and bring me answers. One day I hope we make a breakthrough...and that breakthrough may come soon.


You may recall in my last post, after I got the devastating news that the dna test I had with who I thought was my aunty was negative, that I mentioned there is another man by the same name that might be worth following up. Well I have followed it up.


I have spoken to this mans sister who seems really keen to help if she can. Whilst she hasn't spoken to him direct she has talked to his daughter who has offered to do the ancestry dna test as well, so that will give me an answer one way or another, as to whether this man might be the one! Im anxiously and impatiently waiting for word that the test has been done.




And while I wait for that, another door has appeared that needs to be looked into. A number of years ago I made a post on facebook with me and a sign I made with the details I had on my birthfather (details that still to this day cant be confirmed as 100% accurate but its what Ive been told). This post surfaced again recently and a friend here has a friend in Tumut, who knows someone that fits his description, including the name Robert. I guess its unlikely but I cant not investigate a little further. So I have messaged him via facebook and sent a friend request...... and now I wait till he sees it.


Waiting! So much of this journey is waiting. A day feels like a week, and a week feels like a month.

I'll leave you with a mantra I need to remind myself of regularly....