The day I ordered the DNA kit, I was just killing time. My husband, Marcus, had taken the day off to take our three-year-old, Tessa, to the zoo, and I was in one of those rabbit hole moods. I’d seen the ad a hundred times—Trace your ancestry. Discover the secrets in your genes. I figured, why not? It would make for a fun story at Thanksgiving, maybe something quirky to post about in our family group chat.
I wasn’t expecting revelations. I wasn’t chasing anything. I’m thirty-four, happily married, living in suburban Missouri with a teaching job I mostly love and a daughter I’d give my life for. I’d always thought my story was pretty standard. My mom, Teresa, raised me on her own in a small town in Kansas. She told me my dad had taken off before I was born and didn’t want anything to do with either of us. End of story. It wasn’t a wound—I barely thought about him. Mom did everything. Mom was everything.
So when the DNA kit finally came in the mail, I spit in the tube with one hand while trying to keep Tessa from knocking over her cup of apple juice with the other. It was all so mundane. I mailed it back the next morning and forgot about it for weeks.
Fast forward to the results.
Mom was visiting for the weekend, helping with yard work and fussing over how Tessa needed more layers even though it was seventy-five degrees. We were standing in my kitchen, the afternoon light slanting through the windows, the smell of coffee and oatmeal cookies in the air. Tessa was napping. Mom was holding her mug with both hands like she always did.
I opened my laptop and clicked through to the DNA site, mostly for kicks. I read the ancestry percentages out loud—Scandinavian, Scottish, German. “Mom, looks like you were right about Grandma’s side being part Viking,” I joked.
She laughed. “Told you. That woman could drink whiskey like a sailor and curse in three languages.”
Then I clicked the “Relatives” tab.
Right at the top: 50% DNA match – Parent/Child.
But it wasn’t her name.
It wasn’t Teresa Caldwell, the woman who raised me on peanut butter toast and sunburned soccer sidelines. It was someone named Deborah Greene. No picture. No connections. Just a name. And a location: San Diego, California.
“Who the hell is Deborah Greene?” I muttered.
I turned the screen so Mom could see. At first, she squinted, like maybe she hadn’t read it right. Then everything in her face changed. She went absolutely still. The mug slipped from her hands and shattered, coffee splashing across the tile. She didn’t even flinch. Just stared at the screen like it had slapped her.
“Mom?” I said, my stomach suddenly heavy.
She backed up until she hit the counter. Her hands were shaking. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You weren’t supposed to see that. I promised I’d never tell. He made me swear.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, but my voice barely came out.
Without saying a word, she turned and walked to the microwave. She opened the drawer underneath it—the one I was never allowed to open as a kid, the one I always thought had spare batteries or junk mail in it. She pulled out a dusty white envelope, thick and creased.
She handed it to me. “Open it.”
On the front, in faded black ink, was my birth date.
But the name above it wasn’t mine.
It said Emily Margaret Greene.
I didn’t open it right away. I stared at it, heart pounding. “Is this me?” I asked.
Mom nodded, lips pressed together.
“I was adopted?”
“No. Not exactly.” She looked like she might throw up. “You were… you were given to me.”
My knees nearly gave out. I sat down at the kitchen table without realizing it.
“What do you mean, ‘given’?”
She sat across from me, clutching the edge of the table. “I was working as a nurse in Wichita. There was a doctor there, Dr. Howard Greene. He was respected, brilliant, and… strange. Kept to himself. One night, I was on shift in the maternity ward. He came to me, out of nowhere, and said, ‘I need your help. My daughter can’t keep the baby. My wife can’t know. She’s not mentally well enough for this. You don’t have children. You’ve said you want one. Take her.’”
I blinked. “You mean… I was stolen?”
“No! No, it wasn’t like that.” Her voice broke. “It was legal. I think. He had papers. He said Deborah wanted it this way, that she’d signed everything. But I never met her. I just… I raised you. I loved you.”
Tears stung my eyes. “But you didn’t tell me.”
“He made me promise. He said if anyone ever found out, it would ruin lives. That Deborah wasn’t well. That the family would fall apart. I was young, scared, and I—” she broke off, crying now. “I loved you from the moment I saw you. I never wanted you to feel like you weren’t mine.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside were papers—birth records, handwritten letters, and a photograph. A young woman holding a newborn. Her eyes were haunted, her smile barely there. She looked like me. Not just a little. Exactly.
I sat there for hours after Mom left to get some air. Marcus came home and I told him everything. He held me while I cried, while I laughed, while I flipped back and forth between rage and curiosity.
Over the next few weeks, I debated reaching out to Deborah Greene. Her profile on the DNA site didn’t offer much, but I found her through a public records search. She lived in a quiet neighborhood in San Diego and worked as a librarian. No kids. Never married.
I wrote a letter.
Three drafts, lots of edits. I kept it simple. Told her who I was. That I didn’t want anything from her. Just the truth. Maybe even a conversation.
She responded a month later.
Her handwriting was delicate, careful.
She said she never thought I’d find her. That when she was seventeen, she got pregnant and her father took control of everything. That he told her she wasn’t capable of raising a child, that it would destroy her mother, that the baby had been given to a good woman who would raise her well. She said she thought of me every day. That she never forgave herself.
Last fall, I flew out to meet her.
It was surreal. We looked like twins. We sat in a little cafe by the ocean, and she cried when I handed her a photo of Tessa. She told me about her life, her regrets, the therapy she went through trying to forgive herself.
She said, “I always hoped you had a good life. That someone loved you like I would’ve.”
And I said, “She did.”
Now, we talk every week. Tessa calls her “Miss Debbie,” and they send each other stickers and storybooks in the mail. It’s not perfect. It’s messy and weird and beautiful.
I forgave Mom. It wasn’t easy, but I did. She made a horrible decision in fear, and I see that now. We’re rebuilding trust. Slowly.
The funny part? That stupid DNA kit gave me more than just the truth.
It gave me a fuller version of myself.
