WHEN ANCESTRY DNA TESTS GO WRONG

I never saw myself as ever being in this situation, I grew up with married parents who held a deep dark secret, but I suppose I should start from the beginning.

You see I love DNA, there was nothing that I enjoyed more growing up as a kid than watching the Maury Show on FOX, the only thing that trumped this was my love for anime. I loved Maury so much my mother began calling me Maury boy, the DNA test, the lies, the scandals, and all without the nastiness you see on Jerry springer. Eventually Maury began focusing on the meat of their show, those DNA test. Man did I love to make fun of those girls just having no control I truly judged them and thought I was above all their ratchetness, after all I knew who I was I came from married parents.

Fast forward to 2013. I had heard about these ancestry DNA test since 2012, to be quite honest nothing excited me more than knowing my ethnicity. I put in an order with 23andme as soon as the kits went on sale. I couldn't send my spit fast enough recording the whole process for Youtube, finally I would know what I was.

When the results were returned to me I was a bit surprised to see no Chinese but rather 0.8% Native American being my closest tie to the Asian continent. I was also shocked to see I was only 7% European as my mother looks like she is 1/4 white but I assumed maybe it was because my dad was 100% African. So I rushed to tell my mom thinking that she would feel excited to learn all this, stating the lack of Chinese ancestry (something my family declared religiously).

The first thing I said to her was "mom do you know a Lindel? I matched with her grandson she would be your mom's sister". My mom being hard of hearing replied "Aunt Lindel is dead?" After clarifying things with her I began to say I didn't realize she had so much family in the states and how comes she never talked about them. I then made jokes about how we weren't mixed with Chinese but Native American. She then blew up and asked why I had done the test, that such things can't be trusted. then she said something that blew over my head but should have stood out in the moment, " why are you wasting your money on those things, are you trying to prove your father isn't your father?" I defended myself saying it doesn't work like that I did it for the ethnicity estimate, and couldn't understand how she didn't find this all to be interesting.

It was a couple years later that a cousin reached out to me on AncestryDNA. She wanted to know how comes we shared the same tree but no DNA since she had done the test. Working together I found out she would be my dads second cousin thus being my third cousin but there was no DNA linking me to the Barnes family at all, this was made exponential clearer as I discovered there were many other Barnes family members who had taken the DNA test and they had built an amazing tree that indeed did match my own. In that moment all had become clear. I confronted my mother who blew up like a rocket saying random things like, "well maybe if I take the test I won't be your mother", to throw me off. I remember feeling loss I even remember the ground falling from beneath me, that's actually a thing, and the loss of identity hit me harder than even I realized.

It was two years after this mess that I had mentioned it to my shrink, she and I were working on other things but as I grew comfortable I finally spoke to her about it. I had only ever mentioned this secret to coworkers who didn't know my family or a couple anonymous online blogs like Reddit. She assured me if it was bothering me the right thing to do was to approach my mother, I tried letting her know it was useless as me and my mother often had really bad communication issues, its almost like every time I tried talking to her half her brain was somewhere else. Nevertheless I agreed. I had hoped that maybe now my mother was able to come forward with the truth and I could put this all behind me and work on my mental health. That was not to be the case, big surprise, she blew up me again on our phone call and attacked me for being single and unable to find a wife and that it should be my focus, the then said something about she is not going to tell me because she doesn't want anyone to kill he. Who is this woman running from the mofia? This caused such a split between us tat other than my nieces and nephews birthdays I was very separate from my family I was convinced that they must know something, how could everyone know nothing. I was spiraling out of control and trusted no-one.

In 2020 I was a man on a mission I spent every moment I could researching all my DNA matches family tree and writing all of them to see if I could get closer to the truth but still nothing. I become so angry at the women in my family I began to distrust all women. I decided that in 2021 I would disconnect completely from my family and life my truth, I needed a fresh start. This was how the year began but my mother reached out to me inviting me to her new church she was excited about, my mother was always more into church than she was into anything going on in my life. However as I am a more mature man now I can see that she struggled to connect with me as a child because she was emotionally unavailable and needed to workout her own demons, the timing was awful of course but that's life. I told her I would go but she must show up to my place to do AncestryDNA test so I could organize my matches (I am still a man on a mission of course). She agreed but cancelled 4 hours later I was so angry I removed myself from the family Whatsapp group and told he I wouldn't be at her church. She called back at my sudden change in mood and asked why. I told her "you know why mom, I'm just tired of this now". She replied with a "what ? tell me", but I was so run down I couldn't tell her. curiously she raised the topic "you mean the DNA thing you told me about?" Ah-ha seems the stress was taking its toll on her as much as it had on me. She began to say how she thought that was over, I asked her how that was even possible when she wouldn't even give me name. Fast forward, it was on this phone call that she finally told me I indeed had a different father who had no interest in raising me. Finally the truth. I did go to her church and on the ride back to my home she finally told me the last name, though not the first, of the man who she said was my father, Martin. I don't know if its true or if she was just giving me something to get it out of my system. Personally I was just relive to have her DNA and sent the kit at soon as she dropped me off.

A tip to the young don't let any of these older folks fool you with their "back in my day" crap . They were just as wild as you when they were young but they had a Christian society back then so they can all pretend they married virgins or didn't fool around with the other neighborhood kids. These old timers are some of the best actors you will ever meet, everything from secret kids given away for adoption to hiding adultery. And this is why there are so many DNA surprises coming out. I joined so many Facebook groups hearing the same stories of people who have gone through the same things. Some finding out after their parents died never being able to confront the secret keepers. One girl found out her dad's brother was her father and another girl found out her mom's brother was her father. It was so shocking and grieving to hear their painful stories that it actually helped me find community and support with all of these individuals. I still haven't found my biological father and I may never meet him, the questions of other siblings and potential living grandparents still roam my head every single day, but I feel now I am ready to move on and begin a family of my own. I don't bring the topic up with my mom and I try to engage with her so she feels I am not lost to her. The old wounds have healed and I am open to where this new light in my heart may lead us.

-Andrew Barnes