SheenaLMartin.com

How DNA changed my life and I circled back

I wrote this probably 4 years ago, a broad sweep of my story. 5 years ago this week I met my paternal birth family. What a weird thing to do at 52.

I haven’t shared it much, because knowing what I wanted to say, who I wanted to say it to… well that’s still not completely clear. What is my TELOS?
But it seemed like a good way to start 2022. As we further define what we want to achieve with our group Adoptees Connect Phoenix https://www.facebook.com/groups/2824350244317852

Becoming Sheena

I imagine that when most people look in the mirror they can identify at least a trait or two that resembles someone in their family. Your eyes are like grandma, you have the same nose as your dad. Grandpa died of heart disease, and Aunt Sue had breast cancer. When you’re in the doctor’s office you know at least a little of what runs in your family. Most people are pretty complacent about their ancestry, and recognize that their family history is there if they care to look.

These days, with the large media campaigns across Social Media and TV, companies like 23andme, myheritage.com, and Ancestry, exploring your ethnic make-up has become a novelty. People spit in a tube, or swab their cheek, and today’s technology can give them a glimpse of their ancestors who lurk in their DNA.

Stop and think about that for a minute. Especially in America, we may very well be the literal melting pot walking around with DNA from all over the world.

Now imagine you’ve spent years looking in the mirror, or looking at your children, and wondering whose nose is this that flares when you’re mad, and you see when you look at your son. Every time you see a new doctor, you have to explain you have no idea what runs in your family, maybe she better look for EVERYTHING. And anytime you’ve asked about your genetic heritage, your parents have a melt-down, no one has any answers, and even if you go to the state or agency you’re told ‘NO’ you have no right to this information.

In wanting to share my story, I hope I can influence someone to stop, think about how they would feel in a similar situation, and exercise some empathy. I also want to provide HOPE for those who’ve been seeking their whole life, have the primal need to know their origins, and to see that the tools available today make it possible to reveal secrets hidden for generations.

DNA doesn’t lie.

I belong to a few different groups online, who share their stories with an understanding of anonymity. Many times, someone has done their DNA, reaches out to a cousin match, and they’re blocked, the family tree is taken down, and they’re met with a wall of silence. Rejection, even by strangers, hurts. Take a few minutes to educate yourself about DNA. It’s not a pseudo-science, it’s not a guess. There are actual shared markers that are passed down over generations. These are identified, you share a common ancestor, and even if Uncle Charlie was messing around, it’s been many years ago, and helping someone identify their origins is the kind thing to do. If I can urge any change in someone’s thinking, it’s to be kind. Imagine yourself in their place.

Adoption has been around for thousands of years. Historically, those orphaned were taken in by extended family members more often than not, and they at least had a narrative of what happened, and how they fit in their family group. The much more recent development of closed adoption in our society has been a bag of mixed results. Yes, wonderful people who longed for a child and were unable to have one biologically have been blessed with a child, that for whatever reason the original parents chose to relinquish. Yes, that is a positive. You’re chosen, these people want you.

As a society though, we’ve swept under the rug the less than positive dynamics of this artificially created situation. The birth parents are forever haunted by the “what if” and how is that child? Maybe they were pressured into the decision, and regret it the rest of their lives. Maybe the shame follows them around, they never get or give that forgiveness to themselves, and it has far reaching consequences on their psyche and their relationship with future children. Secrets, skeletons… always lurking in the recesses.

The adoptive parents are both grateful, and insecure. They’re worried someone might swoop in and take that child from them, undermine their parental status. “How can you be so ungrateful, and did all this for YOU?!” They also don’t often look at the sadness and disappointment not being able to have their own biological child does to them. Why aren’t we enough? More secrets, repression, and unexplored feelings.

And we adoptees ourselves, take on this secret, learn to repress from an early age, seek to please, and then proceed to live life without a complete picture of who we are, where we come from, and how we connect. One of my very best friends has often said to me since childhood “Well, you’re damaged.” For many, many years I took great offense at this. I’m not damaged, I’m blessed. These people wanted me. I’m well adjusted, emotionally healthy comparatively. It’s taken 50 years for me to come to terms with her being right.

There are some great books that go into this subject in depth. Journey Of The Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness, by Betty Jean Lifton. The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Newton Verrier . As noted in the review on Amazon, one adoptee said, “Only one thing has caused me more pain and damage than the existence of the primal wound: the world’s insistence that it does not exist.”

Trust me, it exists. Even if you’re not consciously aware of it’s existence, it exists. I rebelled against the secrecy in my own way, look back on my youth and choices through the lens of time, and see how much of my life, relationships and connections were and are colored by the tapestry of a closed adoption. I do have regrets, not that I beat myself up about, but the usual teenage angst of self identification separate from one’s parents was amplified, and my reactions and seeking cost me dearly.

I didn’t marry the man I should have, I didn’t form close relationships like others, but lived at a distance protecting myself, or so I thought, from further abandonment. I have two failed marriages in my wake. Betty Jean Lifton equates it to the story of Peter Pan, where you’re “betwixt and between” You don’t really belong in your family, you’re not really going to belong in your original family, and instead you’re adrift alone, on your own. The positives of this is a greater ability to empathize with others, and a sense that really, you belong to the whole world.

Origins

I became my parents daughter on March 10, 1965. The State of New Mexico called them, asked if they’d like to come meet a baby who’d been placed for adoption who might meet their criteria. My parents, in a state with the racial make-up of New Mexico, had been offered Native American babies, Mexican babies quite a few times after they had passed “inspection” and been qualified to adopt. They wanted a child who could at least potentially pass as their biological child. An understandable criteria when already faced with the questions and stares, they hoped this would minimize this aspect, and it was the 60’s.

I had been born on Christmas Eve, 1964, in El Paso Texas, at Hotel Du. My birth mother had spent the last trimester in the Salvation Army Maternity Home. In those days, people were still unaware of the bonding in small infants, and the state kept the baby in foster care for a period of time to make sure it was healthy, etc. So for the first 10 weeks I was cared for by a Mexican lady in Las Cruces who called me “Carmencita.” Family story goes that mom, once she held me, was not going to give me back, so they left that day with me in tow. Dad got the high honor of naming me, and chose Sheila after his favorite comic strip. I still joke I would have been a lot cooler if he’d actually named me Sheena of the Jungle, but Sheila is close.

I had a privileged middle class upbringing, by self-made adventurous parents who left Arkansas with a trailer full of their stuff, a small amount of money, and a dream. My mother worked at a bank while my dad went to college in Los Angeles. From there, poor depression-era kids made a great life, and a share-cropper’s son received a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA. I have a great deal of pride in their accomplishments, they truly were that post-war generation that made America outstanding.

My mother was born with a hole in her heart, and 1/3 of her blood went around without being oxidized. If she were born today, that would have been repaired and she would not have had the challenges she lived with daily. It was this that made adoption the only way for them to have children, and I’m sure I was an answer to prayer. They told her she wouldn’t live past 30. My determined mother made it to 75.

I love my parents. Like any family, there’s good and bad. They’re just other humans. They are my parents, my only parents. They changed my diapers, sacrificed to give me a great foundation (piano lessons, ski lessons, every opportunity available) and loved me and my children with their whole heart.

My need to know and question had consequences. They were upset, felt me disloyal, and the way to deal with it, even to this day, is to not discuss it. I sincerely hope my behavior, and presence in their lives has spoken my heart. There’s no one else I’ll ever call Mom and Dad. I dislike the secrecy, but I look at it as a continuation of the dysfunctional closed adoption system, and something I have little control over, so I just leave it alone.

The 1st Search

At 19, so 1983, in my 2nd year of college, I was out on my own, and went to the State of New Mexico and asked for what’s known as my “non-identifying” information. My also adopted brother, born in 1970 in California, had received a typed-up sheet of information. I at least wanted that. My parents had been told I was part Italian, and German and a short story of an unmarried teenage girl. When you’re 19, 3 months since you requested information seems like forever, so besides the write-up a month later, I got lucky and spoke with the woman typing up the information from the file, and from it I got a few more facts that did help in identification. Facts like, my birth mother was also adopted, and that she’d had a child before me who she had kept. These tidbits upset me a little at the time, and I put my search down for almost a decade.

Life went by, and I had two children of my own. Not knowing THEIR medical history also helped prompt me in my quest and desire to know my birth story. So I pulled out my notes from the phone conversation, my write-up, and took a secretive vacation to Las Cruces, NM to see if I could unravel my birth family. A newspaper announcement of my ½ brother, who was kept, pointed me to the correct Mary Anne. A yearbook photo from 1963 gave me my first glimpse. The help of a search-angel detective who had access to public records helped me identify the who and the where, pre the internet.

This was not some happy ending of fantasies. Half brother was in prison, in the prison my college roommate’s dad was the Warden. Bio mom lived in a single-wide trailer in Fresno. While I’ve had a problem being overweight ever since having children, she was on the end of the spectrum they make reality shows about. (She had bypass in 1999, and is still alive today because of choosing that procedure.) I’m writing about more details. For now, suffice it to say, it was far from rosy.

I drove up to meet her in-person, from where I lived in Southern California to Fresno, the day OJ was “running” in the Bronco with AC Cowling. June 17, 1994. I certainly was glad to miss that traffic nightmare happening in Los Angeles. I listened to it all live on KFI640, the super-strong AM station from LA.

I told my adopted mother about this a year or so later, because there was a good possibility I might get called to attend my birth mother’s husband’s funeral. He was also adopted, and also born on Christmas Eve. He died tragically in his early 50’s of cancer. My adoptive Mom asked a few questions, looked straight at me and said “I never want to hear about this again.” And she never did.

Bio-mom and I have been close ever since. We’ve had our ups and downs, but she always wanted to know what had happened to me, and was very open and authentic since the beginning. I found her birth family, sadly from her birth mother’s obituary in 2000, but now she lives in Indianapolis, travels with her half sister, and went from an only child to having an extended family she is blessed to know.

She was the result of a questionable encounter (meaning was it forced, or the product of too much alcohol and bad judgment?) as WWII wound down. She was most likely conceived the day the first nuclear bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert. Ironically close to where she lived after being adopted. Her birth mom Bessie was a WAC, and her birth father a suave Italian GI. Her sister knew a name. She told her that her mom often cried herself to sleep at night, having given her up.

20 years later

I thought I had figured out the correct Tony Maggio in 2012. And no, it’s not lost on me that Frank Sinatra’s character in “From Here to Eternity” is named Tony Maggio. We became friends with Tony Jr, in Chicago. Talks were of meeting someday. So we had a complete picture of HER origin, or so we thought. We knew her Sicilian came from Sambuca di Sicilia. Finally, answers.

Mary-Anne named me Dovel Marie Hall. She thought I was her long-term, on-again, off-again boyfriend’s, but she always told me there was one other guy, but it was brief, and she thought he died in Vietnam.

Danny Hall, the guy named on my birth certificate, was 22 when I was born. He never wanted children for whatever weird reasons, and he never would meet me. The rejection was absolute, but I found some answers by meeting his brothers and his mother in 1996. They shared information with me, let me visit them a few times at the Jersey Shore where they all live now. They even provided me with a family tree going back to the 1600’s, all in German, that I had it tucked away in my “Family Tree” box.

I started working on building out Danny’s side of my family tree in earnest in 2014. The further I got, the more amazed I became. No wonder these people were a little weird about me being part of their family story. Oma, who is still alive today at 99, is descended from royalty. The real, House of Hanover, Germanic royal family that even ruled England at one point. King George, King James.

Just, wow.

I also watch all those genealogy shows. “Who Do You Think You Are?” and “Finding Your Roots.” and because of that, I was aware of advances in DNA in recent years, but it was the episode of LL Cool J, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person at a Dodger game, on “Finding Your Roots” that led me to order that DNA kit. In that I was already an Ancestry member, paying my $35 month, it was from them I ordered my kit in March 2016.

LL Cool J sat down to learn about his roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr, and it turned out his still living 70 year old mother was adopted, and was never told about it. The family tree they’d built didn’t match the DNA results when they came back. Her parents had passed. She was blown away, LL was blown away, and through DNA Mr. Gates, and particularly CeCe Moore and her team (I belong to her DNA Detectives group on Facebook. Most helpful in learning and commiserating with others in the same overwhelming search) they were able to tell LL and his mother who her birth parents were, and sure enough, LL’s grandfather was a well-known boxing promoter in Tucson in the 1920’s. If you know anything about LL, besides his ability to rap and act, he’s very into boxing. Apparently it’s a genetic trait.

So, I’m looking at a family tree, descended from Colonial America, Sicily, and German royalty. I work for a German family from New York, my husband and I take care of their vacation ranch and home in Colorado. In other words, I’m the glorified maid and cook. How on earth did I go from Royalty to ironing sheets? Something has gone horribly wrong!

So May 5, 2016, I opened up my ancestry.com account, to find my DNA results. I could instantly tell I could NOT be a Hall, I’m at most 9% Europe West – which encompasses France and Germany. I’m also 31% English, 26% Italian, 11% Irish, and most surprising, 19% Scandinavian. Throw in a little Caucus, Middle East (I suspect the melting pot of Sicily) and 2% European Jewish. Guess the Italian canceled out the tall and blonde Scandinavian.

For a couple of days, my head was just spinning. Bio mom was upset, her whole life “was a lie.” And she had absolutely no recollection of the name of the one-time guy. All she could tell me was he had light hair, eyes, a southern drawl, and was the comedian of his group of friends.

The closest matches I had were 2nd cousins, one with Maggio in their tree. Using my well-honed sleuthing skills, I managed to figure out this one guy’s name, and track down details, and even a cell phone number. I called and left a message, and texted. He texted back that he’d call on his way home from work, which he did.

Devin and I share the Sicilian grandfather, Tony Maggio. This guy’s a cousin to the one in Chicago, but OURS was a barber in Houston. Bio-mom suddenly had another sister who’s only 2 months older than her, (Cheating “suave” grandpa.) a lovely lady I’ve spoken to a few times, and look forward to meeting in person sometime soon. Not only did our match solve bio-mom’s heritage (and mine) but there was another cousin who matched us on Ancestry too, but she had no tree. I asked Devin if he knew who she was? He did not. We group chatted. Lisa is also in her 40’s, she knew who her birth mother was, but had never figured out her birth father… one quick glimpse at the way we all matched ie: around 400 cms, it turned out she also shared grandpa Tony, and it was Devin’s uncle Marty, a famous saxophone player in the Houston area, who was Lisa’s birth father. Marty died far too early, in 2011, but Lisa has been blessed to get to know Devin, his family, and she looks just like her aunt, Devin’s mother. She’s gotten close to her. Devin and his wonderful wife Sommer took their vacation throughout Colorado this last year, and we met in person on that trip. Weirdly enough, the one time Sommer lived somewhere other that Houston, was a few years in my exact neighborhood in California, and she went to the same elementary school as my kids and brother. Yes, que the “Twilight Zone” music again…

​Ok, half solved, for sure. I match the history I know of the Indiana family of Bio-Mom’s. Some of my strongest, earliest identified matches are to them.

That still had me at a loss of the hundreds of other matches Ancestry served up. Today, 8 months later, I have 1,220 4th cousin or closer matches. Let alone ones on other sites not on Ancestry.

Instantly educating yourself, with help of sites like DNA Detectives, and DNAadoption, Gedmatch etc you find the tools, and explanation of how DNA works. Our 23 strands break down into about 6800 centimorgans. Half come from dad, Half come from Mom. Men have the added bonus of their half from dad being an exact replica of his from his dad, so doing the Y DNA test can in-depth explore your paternal heritage back many generations. That test is available through FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe. It’s more expensive than the basic Autosomal version you get via Ancestry and myheritage, and is an interesting tool for exploring if you’re a man.

I could pretty quickly tell, via all the cousin matches, that I was looking for a guy from Louisiana or East Texas. What you need to do is take your best match, who you match most closely and build out their family tree to siblings and forward, what is referred to as a “mirror tree” All these 20 years of building family trees for myself and others meant I had the skills in place to do that quickly.

But wait, it’s rarely as easy as that if you don’t have a match closer than 3rd or 4th cousin. Previous generations had large families. 15 kids have 15 kids, oftentimes they marry sisters, etc. It’s not that easy to hone in… and then, the last census you can look at is 1940. So even if you’ve got a family identified, if you’re looking for still living people, sleuthing got a lot harder. And I knew I was looking for someone born after 1940. Ugh.

So I built away, and now have a tree with over 20k people in it, branches extending all over west Louisiana and East Texas and beyond. I uncovered great stories, tragic stories, interesting figures in history, but still didn’t have a match that got me close enough to drill down to a candidate.

Even today, my 2nd highest match on Ancestry (and Gedmatch) is a cousin named Jamie. She lives in Beaumont, TX. Although, as you’ll see shortly, I have solved who my birth father is, her family tree that she KNOWS does not match up with the family tree I have from birth father’s family, going back to the late 1700’s. She and I even have a 69 year old adoptee match, who matches her father as a 1st cousin, and we can’t for the life of us figure out exactly how he matches. In genetic genealogy they have coined this an “NPE” or non-paternal event. Note of caution for anyone out there, NPE’s happen in a LOT of families. The postman, the mailman, the milkman – it sounds funny, but we’re all fallible humans who don’t always follow “the rules.” Wikipedia states it at 2 – 12% occurrence, depending on the studies. That means 1 in 6, yes, 1 in 6, will have some match that doesn’t match your KNOWN family tree. Be ready. Be forgiving. Be kind.

So months of looking and studying how to manipulate your DNA to identify how you match. Building trees. Uploading your DNA to other sites, the most powerful one being Gedmatch.com. People who tested at any of the sites can upload their raw data for free, and use tools built by others to compare your DNA to others on the site. Problem is, if you’re trying to solve a mystery, not everyone who tests is as motivated, and they don’t put it on Gedmatch. If there’s one strong lesson I learned here, I wish I had spent the money and tested at ALL the sites, widening the pool. One of the greatest tools on Gedmatch is phasing. I was lucky enough to have bio mom let me have her DNA (she tested at 23andme, mostly because they HAD more indepth medical reports based on your DNA. This has altered a little in the last 6 months, because it’s still a little murky the reliability, so they backed off some of their reports.) I was able to take her DNA and mine, and use the “Phasing” tool on Gedmatch to create a profile that was now “BIO-DAD only” from my DNA. That helped me look at the matches of people who were on the correct, mystery side.

*Note here. Another great tip. Promethease.com is another site, that for $5 lets you upload your raw DNA, and the next day, it will make you a report of all the known markers so far identified for good and bad health and physical traits. It’s interesting, and a little scary.

Again, DNA doesn’t lie. Proceed with caution if you’re not ready for the facts, they’re never all rosy and sunshine.

So in November I was reading in the DNA Detectives group about myheritage.com now doing DNA testing as well as having a great platform to build your family tree, and at this point, they let you put your raw data there for free. I had my Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA (paid the $40 to reveal more matches) and Gedmatch profiles, and still nothing closer than right around 100 cms, or 3rd cousin range.

I went back the following day, after processing, to myheritage.com, and lo and behold, I have a 245cms match. This guy’s name is Kyle “G” Remember, I have a huge tree, on every side now, and never have I seen the name “G” so I click his profile. Mostly it says “Private” and a last name (all these sites do NOT put identifying information up for living people) but his father says “Martin.” So I write him.

He came back with a story. His mom was in the Air Force, she got pregnant in 1984/85 while stationed in Germany. She always told him his dad’s name was Martin, but she gave him her maiden name. He’d never met him, was trying to find out who he was, but he had no idea… She only told him she’d written a letter and sent in to him with his friend, since he’d been sent off to another assignment when she found out she was pregnant, and she never heard anything… so, whether he knew or not… unknown. But, one look at his story, back at my big huge tree (and other cousin matches trees) it took me about 20 minutes to point him towards the correct Martin. Career Air Force. Matches on all fronts – DNA and story.

Kyle, who I’m confident will be adding his own elaboration to this story, has since talked to his identified half sister, he’s texting and messaging with his birth dad, and poof, DNA solves another mystery.

Finding Kyle helped me finally narrow down the right branch of the Martins. There were 9 kids in our (shared) great grandparents generation, and since he’s descended from one, I took a good close look at the others.

Out of them, there was really only one family that had boys the correct age to have been born around WWII and it’s end, and for those boys to have served in Vietnam. One of those 3 boys had passed in 2008, and I’d noticed a strong physical resemblance to his picture on his obituary back in June! The one for sure email I could find was to the oldest of these men. I tried a phone call, and left a short message, and took a deep breath and wrote an email. A long, in-depth email. I got a reply of “I think you’re onto something, but I’m on vacation in Hawaii. I’ll get back to you when I return.”

So now I had to display patience. I’m proud of me, I did. But 2 weeks later, still no further contact, and I wrote again. He did respond, and tell me his wife of 50 years was completely freaked out by all this, but that as soon as he was able to work this all out, he’d get back to me. Please don’t write or call. Oh man, patience is not one of my greatest qualities. He still hadn’t said “yes, it’s me.” But I suspected it was. And I could tell then, I had a sister. I so wanted to write her, call her. I settled for some creeping of Facebook. Trying to be an obedient daughter instead of the rebel.

On December 18th he called me. He told me, indeed he remembered bio-mom. He was on a downward spiral at that point, his high school girlfriend had dumped him, he was drinking a lot, and he remembered a brief week or two of hanging around bio-mom, in Las Cruces. He relayed a story, about how Danny had taken him outside, invited him for a cup a coffee, and proceeded to tell him to bow out, that Mary-Anne was his girl, or he’d sic his Italian friends on him. Since, as he put it, he’s a lover not a fighter, he bowed out gracefully, and the rest is history. He also said he knew his daughter would want to know about all this…but to give him some time. I mentioned that I would be visiting near him in early January, as I had a trip already planned to be in So Cal for my son’s 30th birthday, and to swing around Arizona on my way home. I told him I’d just wave, but was hopeful that someday I could meet him in person.

When I stopped in Page AZ by Lake Powell on January 1st, on the way to Las Vegas, I checked my phone and Facebook, and found that I had a friend request from MY SISTER! I’ve never had a sister!! All I could do at that point in a 10 hour drive, was accept and write “Hallelujah!” on her wall. We texted back and forth a little that evening. Now I was getting excited! Finally, at 52, I was going to have a complete picture. The next morning, bio-dad called me, said his wife was better with it, told me he’d told my sister, and we discussed a visit. January 9th I arrived at my sister’s house after visiting my adopted dad, spent a few hours with her, and then we went and visited bio-dad and her mother. Wonderful people, and to look at someone you look like… well, it’s odd. My sister and I are a lot a like, both musical, outgoing and eclectic, and we even voted for the same person when we couldn’t stomach the two main-party choices foisted on us this past election cycle.

This will be an ongoing relationship we build over time. I’m grateful every day that DNA could answer my questions,questions I didn’t even know I had until I spit in that tube…

I also found that I am indeed mostly a southern-girl, as I was raised. Not a misplaced Yankee girl, with German roots, but primarily old English/Scottish stock that migrated west. No wonder I don’t like cabbage, like at all. Except in KFC cole slaw. And fate and Providence put me in a family very much like my genes. My adopted father’s family tree, his grandmother’s branch was from the same small and storied town in Louisiana. I’m not going to be surprised at all if further sleuthing reveals I’m indeed a distant cousin to my adoptive parent(s.)

Just remember, if you’re looking for answers yourself, it’s not often it’s instantly answered by your results. It takes some time to learn how to work with the results, build mirror trees and examine families. If you’re just interested in seeing your ethnicity results, fine. But please keep an open mind that somewhere in your family, someone might have given up a child, or fathered one he had no idea about… so answer the messages you receive, maybe go back and check your results if you haven’t been there since seeing them the first time. You might just be the solution for someone else to answer their life-long quest.

Be kind. Show empathy. We’re all just humans, fallible humans, rotating around on this rock, looking for our connections to others.

For what else is life really, but our connections to others?