The Complication of Learning You Have Half Siblings

Spoilers ahead!  Imagine you get the shock of your life.  You take an ancestry DNA test to discover some distant relatives.  Your results come back, and you discover not distant relatives but very close ones – half siblings.  What do you do?  This is the very situation Cassandra, the main character in The Rock Star’s Wife series, finds herself in Family Upheaval.

Thanks to modern technology, her situation is not unique.  Sometimes it’s because a person was given away for adoption.

“When it comes to reunions of birth families, they are often not like the movies,” Melissa Guida-Richards, a guest writer for Huffington Post, says.  “There’s heartbreak, anger, numbness and general confusion. People often expect an instant connection with their biological relatives because they share blood, but that can take some time or often never fully develops.”

Guida-Richards learned as an adult she was adopted.  A few years later, she discovered she had two half siblings.  One wanted to get to know her.  The other did not.

Sometimes people learn they have half sibling accidently.

A woman posted on Glow’s message boards seeking advice on what to do about a woman who contacted her claiming to be her half sister.

“I don’t know what to do with this information,” the poster said.  “I don’t want to approach this with my parents in the wrong way where it sounds like I’m judging them or hurt them in any way. But I also want to get the facts. I’m like 60/40 on believing this woman. It’s just the stuff she knew was sort of true.”

Commenters urged her to be honest with her father and ask.

It’s in the DNA

Familial relationships are complicated.  This is because, as the Census Bureau explains, “people define family relationships not just by technical terms, but also based on personal and shared histories.”  In other words the type and quality of the relationship defines what we call it.  Very close half siblings, for example, might consider themselves full siblings.

Full siblings share approximately 50 percent of their DNA. Half-siblings share approximately 25 percent.  So do double first cousins, grandparents and grandchild, and aunts/uncles and nieces/nephews.  First cousins share 12.5 percent of DNA.

What Do You Do?

What do you do when you have a surprise in your DNA test results?  According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2019, 27 percent of people who took a 23andMe or AncestryDNA test discovered close relatives they didn’t know they had.

How a person reacts to the news is determined by a variety of factors:

• People may reject their children or other family members if the discovery is accompanied by pain, shame, trauma, or cultural stigma or if it threatens relationships with other relatives.
• Results may shake a person’s self identity. This often happens when someone discovers their father or mother isn’t biologically theirs.
• People often decide whether to have a relationship with a newly discovered relative based on how others with whom they have relationships react.
• Finding new relatives often shakes long held beliefs people have about their parents.

It’s not uncommon for biological fathers to refuse contact with children they didn’t know they had.

“Even if the news a person receives via spit kit is at first unwelcome or upsetting, the process of managing that discovery and incorporating the news into a person’s life story means she is making meaning out of her own experience, and reclaiming her personal narrative,” Psychology Today says.

In many families, there is at least one person who is willing to reach out to the newly found relative, answer questions, provide a sense of connection, even love.

In other families, new discovered relatives are welcomed with open arms and integrated into the family.

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Do you have half siblings?  Leave a comment below.  Comments close after 90 days.

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Here’s the 4-1-1

This blog is a companion piece to The Rock Star’s Wife, a series about sex, family, and rock & roll.  The series has elements of chick lit, romance and erotica and is best compared to The Vagina Monologues for its frank talk of sex and its consequences.  The series follows Cassandra from her teenage years into her 40s as she navigates relationships (both romantic and platonic) — all with music playing a prominent roll.

Book six, Family Upheaval, debuts August 2025:  Shawna never knew her parents, but DNA testing frightened her.  Who knows what she might uncover?  So Cassandra volunteers to take a test, too.  Little does she know she’ll uncover a long kept-family secret.

Cassandra needs your help getting her story out.  Join the street team to help.