The story of one woman’s frantic search for the truth In my late 40s, I discovered I had a half-brother, Matt*. He’d been adopted as a baby and had been looking for his birth mother. Matt had uploaded his DNA details to Ancestry.
com and got a close match with my uncle. With the help of my uncle, he figured out who his father was. It was my dad, Ben*.
Dad had no idea that Matt, now in his early 50s, existed. Dad and his then-girlfriend, Clara*, had been teenagers – she was only 15, Dad 17. And once she was pregnant, Clara was banned from ever seeing Dad.
She never contacted him again. And Matt still hasn’t found Clara. When I met Matt, I marvelled at the similarities to our dad – his jawline, the same diminutive height, his introverted nature.
It felt so easy to be in his company. I decided to buy an Ancestry DNA kit so Matt could see our shared paternity line. I knew how to trace six or seven generations from Dad’s family, and thought it would be nice for him to see our shared lineage.
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