Jake O’Brien
LOYAL. KIND. PERSISTENT. I grew up in a small resort town on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, a community of about 8,000 year-round residents. I’m the youngest of seven […]
LOYAL. KIND. PERSISTENT. I grew up in a small resort town on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, a community of about 8,000 year-round residents. I’m the youngest of seven […]
EXPLORER. RESEARCHER. MENTOR. “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” I was in college and had an inkling that I was really different from the rest of
RESILIENT. EMPATHETIC. CURIOUS. Do you know who the favorite is in your family? If you don’t, NEWSFLASH—it’s likely you. As the sixth of seven children, I always believed I was
COURAGEOUS. SUPPORTIVE. POSITIVE. I grew up always knowing my “dad” was not my biological father. I was 6 years old when my stepdad adopted me. I was raised to believe
EVOLVING. RESILIENT. HOPEFUL. I took an Ancestry DNA test, and my world was flipped upside down when I got my results July 26, 2021. Oddly enough, I finally decided to purchase
HEALING. GENERATIONAL. TRAUMA. :::Trigger Warning::: This true story contains incidents of abuse, rape, and incest.::: My maternal great grandfather was a Grand Imperial Wizard in the KKK. After he was
RELENTLESS. CARING. PATIENT. Easter weekend, 1967 while my father’s great aunt we received a call to say that my maternal grandmother had died. I was the oldest of four, my
GUARDED. EMPATHETIC. LOVING. How to do you put your life story into a page? You leave out a lot of the darkest parts of the journey and pray it makes
COURAGEOUS. CARING. GRIEF STRICKEN. For nearly 43 years I lived a lie. I had no clue. My dad that raised me was also clueless. My mother claims she did not
CURIOUS. RESILIENT. CHEERFUL. Being a lifelong genealogist, I was super excited to DNA test at Ancestry. When I got my results back in September 2012, I didn’t notice anything unusual.