This is my fourth and final post on the history. On January 1, 2018, New Year’s Day at 11:36 am CST I received a text from Mary to look at my email. Here are some excerpts from that email: “Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Ancestry sold 1.7 million DNA kits. As a result you won the parent lottery. Those new matches to your DNA allowed me to pin point your parents… I believe your birth father… is the first cousin to the man I first thought might be your father and a brother to the woman who’s picture I emailed to you recently. Until last week, he hadn’t showed up as one of his parent’s children. He is the right age and also a first cousin to the Kirkland person discovered in July who was until today your closest match on Ancestry”
“Your mother is my biggest find and was actually confirmed this morning when I took a last look at your matches and found that your uncle’s test was loaded last night by Ancestry.com and he has one sister which appears to be your birth mother.” WOW!!!
I think anyone reading this email would get the same chills that I did and I wasn’t even sitting down! So what would any good researcher do – start looking on social media to see what I could find. One of the first things I found was a notice for my grandmother, who sadly passed away in September 2017. It was in this information that I learned of my half siblings, nieces and nephews and any of my grandmother’s siblings who were still alive. So for the next couple of weeks I reflected on all of the key finds from Mary, additional information that I discovered on the web and deciding on the next steps now having the keys to my family.
January 8-12th, 2018 – This was the week I decided to send a letter to my birth mother. I noticed that my newly found uncle only went into Ancestry.com once and for almost two weeks had yet to log back in. Why was this important you ask? This basically meant that either he didn’t realize what he was seeing on me being his closest match or that he had no idea that he had another niece. Discussing this with Mary and through her guidance and writing help, we decided a letter mailed to my birth mother was the best road to take versus sending something to my uncle. The letter was carefully written to highlight the DNA searches that led me to sending her this letter asking more for her help than identifying her directly as my birth mother. It was important that the letter was clear there was no intent to disrupt their lives with medical interest being my primary reason even though the relationship connection was equally desired. I added a few pictures of me and my family to make it more personal with my contact information at the bottom.
On January 12th in the afternoon while on a conference call, I receive a text from a number I do not recognize. Here is what I basically saw: ‘Hi Mary Lynne, I received your letter in the mail today. I must say I cried when I read it. I have been searching for you for the past two years. I needed to know if you if you were alive and well since I never knew what happened to you. Back then you were kept in the dark about everything… (more details shared on why this was later). Yes I am your biological mother, Sherry Richey (Gavlik). I am so proud and excited about getting to finally know things about you and hopefully meet you!”
From this text, our lives began to connect and so my blog and subsequent posts will now focus on this next exciting stage of our lives…