A routine heritage DNA test, taken purely out of curiosity, upended a woman’s understanding of her own identity, after it revealed that the man she believed to be her father for years was not biologically
related to her.
The woman, whose account has been widely discussed on Reddit, said she decided to take the test after her husband received his results from a similar service. What she expected to be a light-hearted exploration of her ancestry instead exposed a deeply-guarded family secret involving her parents and siblings.
According to her post, she and her two older siblings were adopted by their grandparents when they were children. Their mother, who became a parent at a young age, struggled with addiction, incarceration and instability, leaving the children in the care of their grandparents. The woman said she always knew her siblings had a different biological father and that she was considered their half-sister, a fact she was often reminded of while growing up.
She was told her own father was “a special person” who paid child support but never formed a relationship with her. As a child, she watched her siblings spend time with their father and longed for a similar bond. When she grew older and started asking questions, she said she was repeatedly given vague or shifting answers. At times, her mother even attempted to introduce other men as her father, which the woman rejected as insincere.
Eventually, she stopped trying to make contact with the man she had been told was her biological parent, believing he was intentionally keeping his distance.
That belief collapsed when the DNA test results arrived. To her shock, the platform showed a strong paternal match with the same man who fathered her two older siblings, a match confirmed because he, too, had taken a DNA test and uploaded his profile.
The woman said she is currently estranged from her siblings and has not yet shared the discovery with them. Seeking clarity, she first approached her grandmother, who admitted she had long suspected the truth. Her grandmother also claimed the man originally named as her father had avoided DNA testing in the past, and suggested the woman’s mother may have concealed the reality.
Her mother, however, has dismissed the new results, insisting that a previous state-conducted DNA test confirmed the other man as the father, a claim the woman now doubts, particularly because her grandmother held legal custody at the time. Her mother has also argued that DNA tests “are not reliable”.
