Finding Sisters: How One Adoptee Used DNA Testing and Determination to Uncover Family Secrets and Find Her Birth Family by Rebecca Daniels

Publisher: Sunbury Press (September 14, 2021)
Category: Non Fiction, Memoir, Genetic Genealogy, Adoption, Family Reunion, Extended Families
Tour dates: January-February, 2022
ISBN: 978-1620065587
Available in Print and ebook, 125 pages

Description Finding Sisters by Rebecca Daniels

Where does she come from?

Who are her genetic parents?

Who is she?

Does she even want to know?

With almost no information of her genetic heritage, adoptee Rebecca Daniels follows limited clues and uses DNA testing, genealogical research, thoughtful letter writing, and a willingness to make awkward phone calls with strangers to finally find her birth parents.

But along the way, she finds much more.

Two half-sisters.

A slew of cousins on both sides.

A family waiting to be discovered.

With the assistance of a distant cousin in Sweden and several other DNA angels on the internet, Daniels finally comes face to face with her birth mother just months before her passing. Join in on this author’s discovery of family and self in ‘Finding Sisters: How One Adoptee Used DNA Testing and Determination to Uncover Family Secrets and Find Her Birth Family.’

My Thoughts Finding Sisters by Rebecca Daniels

Rebecca Daniels has known from a young age that she and her younger brother were adopted.  However, she always felt loved by her adoptive parents and didn’t think much about who her birth parents were.

One day, quite some time after her parents died, a friend, told Rebecca that she was going to have DNA testing and that Rebecca should as well.  After giving it some thought, she decided to do it.  Her main objective was to find out about any genetic health problems in her birth family.

After submitting her DNA, lots of results started coming in.  A bunch of distant cousins, including one in Sweden, Thomas.  It turned out to be excellent that she reached out to him as he was really into ancestry and genetics, himself and was very knowledgeable.  Via email, he was able to lead Rebecca down the path of finding closer relatives.  She eventually found her birth mother who was still alive and living with Rebecca’s half sister. Rebecca arranged to meet them and spend time with them. They lived in a different state.  Eventually, she goes on to find more connections including a half sister on her paternal side.

Rebecca shares a lot of information about the steps she took in her search but in such a way that it never got boring.  In fact, I couldn’t put the book down and read into the wee hours of the morning. I am a huge fan of the television show ‘Long Lost Family’ so, when I found out about this book, I knew I had to read it.  If you enjoy well written memoirs, this book is for you.  If you are interested in ancestry and DNA testing and results, this book is for you! I give it 4.5/5 stars and highly recommend it!

I received the eBook for my honest opinion.

Excerpt Finding Sisters by Rebecca Daniels

Excerpt from Chapter Two: I Think We Might Be Related

While I understood exactly what Thomas was talking about, I still didn’t want to move too quickly. I wanted to give Glenna an out in case she really didn’t want to be found, so when I finally wrote that letter, it didn’t say, “I think you’re my mother!” Instead, the phrase I used in my letter was, “I think we might be related.” I decided on a short, hand-written note that told her I had been doing some research into my birth family, that I knew I had been a Baby Jane Doe G—, and that I was wondering whether she was the same Glenna G— who had married Arthur H— in Bremerton less than three months after my birth in the same town.

During the time I was working on exactly what to say to Glenna in my letter, Thomas continued to do research on Glenna’s family and discovered that her adopted mother, Flora, had a sister in Washington State, which made me even more certain we were on the right track. I wrote him back immediately:

That makes a lot of sense to me and is a very exciting development. I’ve been trying to figure out how and why a girl from South Dakota would go to WA State to have her baby, and this information helps a lot. From what I know of illegitimate pregnancies and how they were generally handled in the 1940s and 50s, girls were often sent away when the pregnancy began to show, usually to live with another female relative [ostensibly to help them with something that the par­ents could comfortably say they are having difficulty with . . . losing weight, doing better in school, getting her emotions under control, etc.], to have the baby there, and then give it up for adoption, before returning home as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, except that the girl was now more tractable and socially appropriate.

. . .

While I was working on my letter to Glenna, I also started looking for April on Facebook. Luckily for me, she had her privacy screens set so that I could see a few photos of her, and she had also included a couple of images of her parents, Dorian and Glenna, on her page. I wrote to Thomas immediately, but while he had a basic profile, he was not a regular Facebook user, joking that he might be the last person on the planet who is not, but when I sent him the photos I had downloaded from April’s Facebook page, along with a couple from my own page, he replied almost immediately:

April really looks like Glenna. And so do you! You are a young version of her. These pictures are more than I could hope for. We are lucky that you look like Glenna and April. April could have looked like Dorian, but she obviously looks like her mother. The same holds true for you. You seem to have gotten most of your facial features from Glenna’s side. After seeing Glenna’s and your portraits side by side, I am as convinced as I can get that your birth mother is found. The only thing that can make me even more sure is after you have been in contact with Glenna and got it all confirmed with her.

I also sent the photos to a friend here in Massachusetts and asked her if she saw the resemblance. Her reply? “These are your people; this is your tribe.” So, all that remained for me to do was to send that letter to Glenna, and this new information did nothing to change my strategy for what I wrote in the letter. The evening before my birthday, I wrote out a card by hand and got it ready to mail on the morning of March 17, 2015. That same evening, I got an email from my new cousin, Barbara, who had received my letter and wanted to set up a phone conversation the next day. I immediately sent a note to Thomas, telling him about both Barbara’s email and my note to Glenna:

I wrote a short note to Glenna, one that says, “I think we might be related,” so she can finesse the situation if she’s never told April about the adoption [presuming the circumstantial evidence is correct]. I’m nervous but excited to hear from her, but everything I’ve been reading about the post-WWII adoptions tells me that she could have been keeping this secret for 60+ years, and she might not want to open that can of worms at all. Or she might be thrilled to find her daughter, finally. Or anything in between. I didn’t write to April. I’m going to let Glenna tell her whatever she wants to tell her . . .

Thomas wrote back to say he was excited and happy for me and would be squeezing his thumbs for good luck about these contacts I was making, also telling me he appreciated me keeping him informed about the situation, but he did want to disagree with me about one thing:

I think you handled the contact note with Glenna perfectly. Of course, she will understand who you are, and in the same time, you really show her and April all the possible respect. Well done!

There is only one thing I do not agree with—at all—to call your situation a can of worms! You are gift!!! You were a gift 66 years ago that your birth parents, by reasons we do not know, were not able to take care of. No doubt it was your birth mother’s hardest decision during all her life to give you up. Then you became a gift for your parents. And now you might be a most unexpected gift, 66 years later.

I hoped he was right, that my message to Glenna would be welcomed, though I had no further expectations than that. Frankly, it was all I could manage at the time, emotionally speaking. I had initiated contact with some close members of my probable birth family, and now, less than a month after my first interactions with Cousin Thomas, and thanks to his genealogical expertise and enthusiasm, I was standing on the verge of moving from research to reality!

About Rebecca Daniels

Rebecca Daniels (MFA, PhD) taught performance, writing, and speaking in liberal arts universities for over 25 years, including St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, from 1992-2015. She was the founding producing director of Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, OR, and directed with many professional Portland theatre companies in the 1980s.

She is the author of the groundbreaking Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Effects of Gender on Their Work (McFarland, 1996, 2000) and has been published in multiple professional theatre journals. After her retirement from teaching, she began her association with Sunbury Press with Keeping the Lights on for Ike: Daily Life of a Utilities Engineer at AFHQ in Europe During WWII; or, What to Say in Letters Home When You’re Not Allowed to Write about the War (Sunbury Press, 2019), a book based on her father’s letters home from Europe during WWII.

She had always known she was adopted, but it was only as retirement approached, and with a friend’s encouragement, that she began the search for her genetic heritage through DNA testing. Finding Sisters explores how DNA testing, combined with traditional genealogical research, helped her find her genetic parents, two half-sisters, and other relatives in spite of being given up for a closed adoption at birth.

She is currently working on a new memoir about her late-in-life second marriage and sudden widowhood titled Adventures with the Bartender: Finding and Losing the Love of my Life in Six Short Years.

Website: https://rebecca-daniels.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.daniels.9

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