holy cow. i sent a message to my nearest dna match. she is adopted.

[customerserviceguy]

19. Good, I'm glad to hear that

It may be helpful to have other people in your family test on the same DNA website. If she's using 23andMe, maternal haplogroups might be useful.

If she has something called "non-identifying information" from the place that handled the adoption, that could narrow things down somewhat. I have information about the age of my bio-mom, and that of her parents, and that she came from a family of eleven children. All those things except her father's age (off by two years) checked out.

PM me if you would like my help with this. I've spent the last five and a half years studying genetic genealogy like crazy. The night I found that first cousin, once removed, I couldn't sleep, I kept going over the possibilities that I was wrong all night long. This match only messaged me twice, but the surname of his paternal grandmother unlocked the whole thing. Then, the uncle came along, and confirmed absolutely everything I had figured out.