I have to agree that there could be definitely a downside to this gift. For some folks anyway. I have seen You-Tubes and read stories where people discovered some "odd" things. Like the sisters whose DNA showed them to be only half sisters (shame on you Mommy), or those who paid extra for the health/traits report and now found themselves fearing some future health scare. I really had none of those fears. My brother had already tested and yes he is indeed my brother and it has been at least half a century anyway since I got over having red hair and freckles instead of being a cute blond like my siblings. So knowing exactly what chromosomes on my DNA were to blame? Oh well.Finding DNA connections with relatives. That is what intrigues me. How cool is that, that a person on the other side of the country or even the Atlantic ocean, someone I had never met, nor even knew existed shares a bit of me because of an ancestor we both had many years ago?
Holiday marketing also means holiday prices, sales, bargains. I first tested with 23 and me and uploaded those results to My Heritage. The connections were rather disappointing. Mostly remote connections, 5th cousins and more that I could not find the connection to on my family tree. Then Ancestry.com (the biggest, largest selling company) offered a deal too good to refuse. $49 for the autosomal testing. The most popular company here in the states, it made sense that they could possibly give me the most results. They did! Most of the cousin matches were not a surprise to me. I have a pretty expansive family tree. But it was so very cool to see names of those I knew (if only remotely) that shared not only my family history but my DNA.
The old sexist axiom is that it is "a woman's perogative to change her mind". I have.
I now think this DNA stuff is pretty cool and as the science progresses it can only get cooler!
Of the three companies that have estimated my ancestry, this company (Ancestry.com) comes closest to my genealogical family tree. My paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants and my maternal grandparents were Norwegian immigrants. Personally I am a teeny tiny bit pleased that I appear slightly more Norwegian then Swedish. I was closest to my maternal Norwegian grandmother, Dagmar Gundersen Sevald. It was at her prompting to "don't forget who you are" that I began my family history journey. See "Dedicated to Dagmar" →Here
Love you Grandma,
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