Finding my biological father after 31 yrs | Part 1

nothing so I looked at my test results today on the 23andMe and I have family on there what good morning everybody at least for me I just woke up and I'm about to open my ancestry DNA test results I'm very very excited my sister brought the kit for me for my birthday and it was like the most perfect birthday gift ever because I've been wanting to do it for a while now I just haven't for some reason but a little back story of course growing up with an African-American background you can only trace your history back so far and so we've always talked about how cool it would be to know exactly where our ancestors came from where they originated just know a little bit more about ourselves and our history our family all that jazz and so I'm very very excited about that I remember when I was younger I would talk to my Grandma about you know her history my grandfather too but my grandma I was always kind of like are you like what exactly are you you know what what ethnicities are all in there and um yeah I just thought it would be cool and I remember asking her things like that and she would say you know I couldn't necessarily really ask my grandparents what are you and what's your ethnic background and things like that it just wasn't a socially acceptable question for children to ask their elders and so we couldn't get much information and I'm excited to finally be able to open that door and see everything so yeah I just thought it would be really cool but other than that you all may not know I was raised in a single parent household part of my story is my mom was amazing super hard working woman but I never met my dad I'm not even for sure certain on his full name and so I've I've never met him I don't remember having any contact with him um maybe I did when I was really young but I just I have no recollection of it at all I couldn't Point him out in a lineup anything like that and I remember when I was really really young um it bothered me up until I was about maybe like nine and I just remember feeling like you know how can you have a kid and abandon it how could you know that you created a person and you walk away from that person like I just couldn't understand it um and just going through a lot of things you know looking around like why me why did this happen to me what was wrong with me um and knowing like my family all had this Central house my grandparents house everyone would go over there they would visit it's where we spent a lot of time in our childhood and so I knew that he knew where my grandparents house was and so that meant that he knew how to find me um and so I battled with that when I was really young but like my mom I don't know life just kind of made me into a tough cookie and so until about the age of nine I just kind of was like I don't care no more and I probably need therapy or something I don't know but I literally was just I stopped thinking about it I stopped harping on it I stopped blaming myself and I decided okay my mom is an amazing woman and she is killing it out here in these streets and I'm just going to focus on that and building something better at that time it was like education education education go and get educated so you can get a good career so that you can get out of this mess and build a better life for yourself and I mean in elementary school I was thinking like that um so it's just something that I never really harped on again but now with me being married my husband's at work now recently being married and thinking about you know having kids in the future and family planning for whenever we do decide to try I thinking about the type of father that my husband's going to be and then also my husband comes from a two-parent household and he has absolutely amazing parents this past weekend we just spent like the whole day with his dad for Father's Day and it's just like fatherhood is all around me now especially like with the church that I go to they really hone in on fatherhood too and so I'm just like constantly hearing it and so it's not that I'm necessarily thinking about my father but thinking about fatherhood in general and the type of father that my husband is going to be to our kids someday and how they'll know both sides they'll know you know his mother and his father but I don't have that to give them um and it's kind of like a blank slate there and not that I felt like I missed out on anything like I feel like my life turned out fine it turned out great exactly um but yeah just kind of thinking about those things now and my really really good friend she got her husband in ancestry DNA test and he actually found his entire family on there and so I was like wow like what if I do this test and I find some people and it's so crazy so my results came back after about two and a half weeks and so I think it was Saturday the results came back and then on Sunday it'd say it sent me a message saying that someone has tried to connect with me on there and I'm like why are you trying to connect like do we have the same DNA what's going on so I'm excited to find out all the things um really really excited and have my hopes up for finding out like just my um my ethnic background and things like that so but yeah you never know so I hi I'm excited I'm gonna hop in I'm about to go grab myself a cup of coffee today is a pretty busy day my husband and I are actually a part of a team that's hosting an event for the young adults at our church and I'm so excited about that so that event is tonight and oh my gosh I can't wait to go into further detail about just serving in church and you know what Ministry is looking for me is looking like for me right now is kind of amazing because I love the online things that I've been able to do and how I've been able to reach people with videos but the fact that like I'm now working with young adults in person I'm like oh and today's our first event so pray for us y'all it'll probably be over by the time that y'all see this video but still together [Music] so this is the email it says your reports are ready so I'm about to click and open everything up I know I'm like okay what was the information um oh okay so the first page it just says let me see if I can zoom in for you guys it just says it's time to learn about your DNA this is 23andMe y'all this is not even ancestry DNA what was I talking about all right we are going to scroll through my reports I am ready okay so we are going to scroll through see my report looks very very colorful so I am 75 percent sub-Saharan African as you can see there which is not surprising West African 66.9 percent West African 32.5 Nigerian 20.4 percent Ghanaian Siberian Sierra leonean oh okay I don't even know how to send a gambian and Gideon 6.9 and broadly West African I'm surprised that they can narrow that down so much so it looks like a it's like a really spread out mix so mainly Nigerian okay and then like half everything else the Congolese and Southeast African 5.9 percent and Olin and Congolese 5.1 percent southern east African barely any broadly Congolese and southern east African barely any gather and I'm like what does hunter-gatherer mean I'm gonna need to like look into these things a bit more Somali 0.2 so mainly yeah mainly West African and then 23.5 European with Western European British Irish French and German y Northwestern European and I wish I knew the story behind this yeah because I automatically think like the worst like oh someone was raped or abused and that may not be the story but that's all automatically what I think here and then scrolling down I'm actually really surprised by this East Asian and Indigenous American 1.7 indigenous American 1.2 percent Chinese and South Asian point five percent Indonesian Thai oh I'm not even gonna go there oh wow that's pretty crazy so I was thinking that the um I was thinking that the East Asian would be a lot higher because I don't know I was just thinking that I I really I'm kind of surprised by that so yeah this is interesting okay now I would love to look at family and friends here we go y'all um once you submit everything on here if anyone in your family has submitted something as well if you have matching DNA they tell you and so whoa let's let's see I'm waiting hold on I don't know well let's just look it okay I filled everything out you relatives wow okay they're actually people in here showing they think oh my so this Uncle I see an uncle and I don't recognize that name and we share 23 percent of our DNA and so oh my gosh um this is crazy I I see an uncle oh my goodness so I then you're going to reach out to this person and we will see what happens [Music] um I don't really know what I like I don't feel anything right now um I don't feel like excitement or Joy more just like anxiety of what they may possibly say or if this is even right like I don't know I don't know what I'm feeling I want to call my husband and tell him that I saw this this is crazy this is so crazy I need to call my sister too hello hey you busy nothing so I looked at my test results today on the 23andMe and I have family on there what like my uncle is on there like our like he's 25 of like my DNA is shared with him it has to be like my dad's brother it has to be is this not crazy that is crazy

Channel: By The Shepards

Views: 10,439

Keywords: 23andMe, Ancestry dna, Ancestry, Finding my dad, StorYtime, Identity crisis, Ancestry.com, I found my dad, Biological father

Id: wSMT6f4kOfM

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2022