My DNA

For Christmas in 2016, my husband and I bought each other DNA testing from Ancestry.com.  My results came back on Saturday.

I'm surprised and not surprised.

The not surprised part is that I am 55% Irish.  I knew that 3 of my father's four grandparents were born in Ireland, and that my mother's maiden name was Dunn, so this result was kind of expected.

Where the surprise comes in is there is no match for German.  My mother's maternal grandfather was born in Germany, and my mother's mother's maternal grandmother and grandfather were born in Germany.  My grandmother shared stories of corresponding with her cousins in Germany.  If the DNA map doesn't include Germany, where did they move to Germany from?  Maybe I just didn't get a bunch of the German DNA.  My sister is going to have her DNA tested so that we can see how alike or different our results are.

My DNA would indicate Scandinavia; a migration to Germany from Scandinavia, where I have a 21% DNA match.  The approximate distance from Norway to Germany is 620 miles or 1000 kilometers.   To put that in US terms, about the same as from North Carolina to Florida.

So not a really far away place, but still, a puzzle.

And does it really matter?

For me, it only matters in that science or research can always present you with information that is surprising, that challenges what you think you know.  Everything we think we know can be influenced by the evolution of the information available.

Who I am is less about the DNA I carry and more about my stories, and my personal history and my mark on the planet.  Who I am is in this blog, and in my writing, and in how I care for and about others.

It is great to understand where I came from.  What the biology of me says about my ancestry.  But that is only important in that it can help me find lost relatives, or understand the medical challenges I may face.

The really important truths about me are in my time on the planet, the time behind me and the time yet to come.  No matter the circumstances of my genealogy, I have every minute of every day to choose how I want to write the story of my life.

And so far, I've been blessed to write a happy story.  It has plenty of drama, and conflicts, and difficulties, but overall, a happy story.  I know not everyone is so blessed.  I also know that there were times in the past when the happiness in my story was overshadowed by the trials of the moment.  For anyone reading this who is walking in shadow right now, I hope you return to the light.  I hope you get to write a happy story.

Learning more about myself, my biology, my ancestors, is all interesting stuff.  It expands my world view.  It reminds me that no matter what I think I know, there may be data that will inform me differently.  And that is what makes the journey so exciting.

Being open to finding out that everything you think you know can have a data set to call it into question makes it easier to hear someone else's truth.  Because I found out I had an incomplete picture of my own biological truth.

And you can't get much more surprising than that.  So, I am once more dedicated to listen with an open mind and an open heart, because there may be another truth I think I know that will be called into question with data.