A few months ago, J and I rented the Disney movie Coco. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend that you drive down to your local Redbox and rent it. I cried like a baby at the end of the movie. I had never really felt connected to my Mexican heritage until I watched that movie. Suddenly, I was obsessed with finding out more about my ancestors on both sides of my family.
I signed up for Ancestry.com. I started to build my family tree. I found so many of my family members. I learned a lot about who they were and where they lived in their lifetimes. I learned about marriages, divorces, cousins, occupations, etc. It is all so fascinating. But I was still curious about my own DNA.
Shortly after I started my family tree, I decided to order DNA tests for J and myself. After waiting for weeks, we finally got our results back. It turns out that I am 54% British! I never would’ve seen that coming. My mom’s side of the family swears that we are Irish and Scottish but my DNA claims that I’m less that 1% Irish/Scottish. My dad’s side of the family claims that we are Aztec and Spanish. While the Aztec makes some sense, according to my DNA, I’m only 2% Spanish/Portuguese. I’m actually 22% Native American originating from Northern Mexico and Southern California.
It’s amazing to see the break down of my genetic make-up and where that DNA comes from. It’s even more amazing to compare it to what my family believes. J’s family is the same way. They claim that J is Native American, Mexican, and Filipino. While they were right about him being Native and Mexican, they were dead wrong about the Filipino part. He only has a 3% chance of being Filipino but he’s 9% Central Asian (Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, etc.) and 7% Irish/Scottish. He has Scandinavian, Polynesian, Finnish, and Western and Northern African in him as well.
I love that we did this. I’m a big history nerd. I love reading about families, wars, cultures, etc. I can’t wait to research more about our families and maybe learn something new about the cultures (and ourselves). I’d love to travel to the regions that each of our families are from as well. This is all so cool.
If you haven’t taken a DNA test, I highly recommend it. I know some people are skeptical of giving labs their DNA. I totally understand and respect that. But if you aren’t someone who is particularly skeptical about it ( I definitely wasn’t), then order an AncestryDNA test or a 23andMe test. It could possibly open up a whole new world that you didn’t even know about.
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