DNA Surprises, Biological Roots, and the Meaning of "Family": A Conversation with Genealogist Jennifer Mendelsohn

Dr. Andrea Bonior: How do we define where we came from? Can it be found in a DNA test? Why is the pull of knowing our biological roots so powerful? And what happens when they're not what we expected? Today we'll talk with genealogist Jennifer Mendelsohn, who has been involved loved in some of the most fascinating and high-profile searches for biological family, and also some accidental findings that are, shall we say, unexpected. We'll explore some beautiful stories and also some that didn't go as well. How do we decide what defines who we are? What is the real meaning of roots and family? If you're thinking of buying a DNA test or charting your family tree with online tools, you'll want to listen to today's Baggage Check.

Welcome. I'm Dr. Andrea Bonior, and this is Baggage Check : Mental Health Talk and Advice, with new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. It is not a show about luggage. Incidentally, it is also not a show about the ins and outs of jambalaya.

Hey there—this is me, adding a little something right as this episode is dropping. Our guest today just had a major announcement—which she was not allowed to reveal during our interview, but the news went public right as we were publishing this, so I get to be the happy bearer of this news!-- and that is her brand new partnership with the Center for Jewish History where they have begun a really special initiative called the DNA Reunion Project., which seeks to provide free DNA testing kits and genealogical consultation to all Holocaust survivors and their children. This is really exciting and relates directly to some of the remarkable stories we’ll talk about today. For more information, you can visit cjh.org, again that’s CJH as in Center for Jewish History DOT ORG. Okay, on to the show.

So I am so glad to be able to talk to Jennifer Mendelsohn today. She and I go back quite a ways. We've been friends for a long time, and she's a true multi-talent. She has a background in journalism, but then, almost accidentally, if I'm correct, and I'd love to hear more about this, she stumbled into genealogy, and now it's her passion. She has initiated all kinds of genealogical research and projects, whether it's DNA genealogy or paper genealogy. And I thought she'd be a wonderful person to begin to explore this topic with. I know a lot of us are thinking about our roots and the implications of understanding more about our ancestors and where we came from. And I know a lot of us might have been gifted or are considering using a DNA test or a membership to an online site for researching your family tree. And it's getting to be quite popular. We also, though, know that it can be a really heavy topic and that it can come with many complications. And so I'm really glad to get this time today to start thinking through all of this, especially with someone who knows so much. Jennifer, welcome.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to chat with you.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Wonderful to have you too. So why don't we start with how you kind of stumbled into this, because this definitely was not your first career, though it no doubt use some of your skills from your previous career..

t Google search led me to the: 1940

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Oh, my goodness.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: So what I said to her that day in the car was I just was curious. I said, Nana, when you were growing up, was there a lot of buzz about going to America? Because I knew from my own family that so many people left Eastern Europe during that Great Wave. And she looked at me with her typical imperiousness and was like, no, not really. And then she said, as an afterthought, well, you know that my mother had two older sisters who went to Chicago before World War I. Uh, always say that in the cartoon retelling of the story. That's the point at which, like, my eyes bugged horizontally out of my head, and I was just like, what do you mean your mother had two sisters who went to Chicago? Because immediately, I just thought if your mother had two sisters that went to Chicago, you have family. Like the same woman who had lost everybody, right? I said, Nana, what happened to them? What are you talking about? She said, well, the war broke out, and my mother was supposed to join them. And because the war broke out, she never was able to come. And I said, yeah, but what happened to the sisters in Chicago? And she got very uncharacteristically quiet, and she said, I don't know. She said, somehow they lost touch after the war. And she said when she finally came to the US. In the it just breaks my heart, because she said, I wrote a letter to the one guy from our hometown who I thought might know where my aunts were, and I never heard back from him. And she said, I later heard that he had died. And so, like, when you're a newly arrived Polish immigrant in the 50s, don't speak English, and there's no Internet, and she didn't know their last names, that was a very important detail. I was like, Nana, we have to find them. This is crazy. You have family here somewhere. So to make a very long story short, I spent the next two weeks completely in a fog. Like, I lived at my computer. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never done genealogical research before, but I had been a reporter for 25 years. So I just was like, okay, two Polish sisters came to the US before World War I. They lived in Chicago. I'm going to find them. And to make a very long story short, I found them. Um, they never went to Chicago. Because the very first thing you learn in genealogy is a lot of the stories you hear turn out not to be true.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Yes.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: But two weeks later, I went back to her assisted living community and I said, Nana, you need to sit down. I said, Remember you told me that you had two aunts who came to America? She said yes, mhm. I said, Nana, you have three living first cousins.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Wow. Unbelievable.

us. My father was adopted in: 1928

Dr. Andrea Bonior: I mean, it's such a gift when I imagine they would have never expected to be able to have that. The idea of being able to suddenly learn that you have living first cousins, and also the meaning that these folks were still out there, and the survival of people with whom you share roots, it's just so meaningful. And I can imagine how this work really starts to perpetuate itself because you're giving a gift to people. And it's so journalistic, though, too. For a reporter like to have to track down these things and be good with detail and be able to investigate. It's that skill set that I think so many of us don't necessarily have to the same extent, which is what makes it hit a dead end for a lot of people.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Yeah. I give a talk called Think Like a Reporter um, because I feel like I owe much of my success as a genealogist to my training as a journalist, because you have to be focused like a laser beam on the information trail. And I see all the time where other people get lost. And it's the places where a reporter does not get lost, because I've been taught to follow an information trail. Um, so, yeah, that's definitely part of it. But when you talk about the power of it, I mean, I have used the phrase and not to make myself sound more important than I am, but when I did that reunion for my husband's grandmother, I later wrote that I felt like I had bent the space time continuum because she just never imagined that at 95 she would learn anything new. And for their part, the cousins that I connected her with, like so many people, and understandably, just assumed that all their relatives of their mothers had died, because that was the natural assumption. There would have been no way that they would have known that this one little old lady had fled to Russia and lived in places that don't even have names, um, during the war. And they just never would have found each other. So there is sort of a strange compulsion piece to it, for lack of a better word, because I sometimes feel like it's like a curse and a gift that I know how to do this because I want to help everybody. Because I feel like they would have never known how to find one another. And I do know how to do that now. And sometimes I feel like I do. I feel like I just want to help everybody because it can be so powerful and there are so many people who need help.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Yeah. And yet, I imagine there are certain times where what people are hoping for is not necessarily what they get, or maybe even what they're just expecting to be confirmed. Something that they had taken as truth turns out not to be true. In the case of your family, it's like there was this big blank space to be filled in, and it was so beautiful to fill it in. I think a lot of what I hear about sometimes in the therapy room is it's not a blank space. Here's the story that I have found meaning from. And what happens when further research, or just the sort of giving DNA, uh, test to my sister or an Ancestry subscription to a family member as a lark, turns out the story that I found meaning in is now taken from me. It's now not the story I expected. It's not as beautiful.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: I've heard the phrase genealogical bewilderment used, um, and it can be very, very psychologically unmooring to one story that pops into my head when we talk about this. And I feel like this is sort of the most benign example of genealogical bewilderment. But it just shows you how following the trail can change the narrative. Um, I had a friend have a close friend who actually helped him track down his mother's birth father, um, from, uh, whom she had been estranged. Um, and that was a very meaningful experience. But in the aftermath of that, he mentioned that on his father's side. His grandfather had come to the US as a little boy, as an immigrant, um, from the Russian Empire with his widowed mother. So my friend's great grandmother and he said to me one day, you know, I was always curious. My great grandmother was a widow. She was traveling with these small children. I always wondered who met her, like, who did she come to when she finally came? And I said, oh, that's so easy. I can find that for you in 30 seconds.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Mhm.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Except for the fact that when I looked it up, the person who met her was the great grandfather, who was definitely not dead. Um, and on further investigation, not only was he not dead, but he appears to have started a second family in New York City.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Oh my goodness.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: So again, it seems to me, was he traumatized by this information? No. Um, but it certainly created an interesting ripple to the story. So I feel like stories like that are sort of at one end where it's like, whoa, uh, things are not what I taught. And at the other end, we have people like the writer Dani Shapiro, who wrote a very well known memoir about the experience of being completely unmoored by learning accidentally from a DNA test that she took for fun because her husband was interested in genealogy and was like, I'm buying one. Do you want one too? And she learned in her late 50s that her beloved father was not her biological father. And more and more and more people are having that sort of unwring experience by taking especially DNA tests. The great grandparents story was just on paper. But DNA is uncovering so many, so many secrets that people thought they would have been able to bury.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Uh, yes. And they couldn't have anticipated the technology. When your mother told you this story about who your birth father was, she didn't necessarily realize, OK, someday my kid is going to have evidence right in front of them if that's not the case. And of course, you had a hand in Dani’s story and being able to find the roots of that. It's a beautiful, beautiful book. And I know she has a podcast of her own.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: And they’re making it into a movie, a feature film.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Oh, amazing. Uh, yeah. And I think there can be beauty even in finding out these surprise type of things. But I also think in a way, it's probably changing how we think about what it means to be who we are. I mean, part of what I'm curious about, especially for folks who are adoptees or were conceived with donor sperm 20 years ago, or whatever it might be, and have always lived with the idea that their biological roots are not part of their daily story of their identity. And so one thing that strikes me is this paradox where on the one hand, we crave this information about our DNA and our ancestry so much. And then on the other hand, there are real ways where it's not necessarily who we are and we aren't our biological parents. We might be completely different, we might have completely different values. And so I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit, this sort of push and pull. We need to know our roots in a way. But is there a point where we put too much emphasis on that and take away from the fact that, hey, you know, the family I grew up with, even if it turns out we're not genetically related, that's still my family.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: I mean, I see it all the time. I feel like when you start to walk in this world, you understand that there is an overwhelming desire, well, for adoptees and, um, people who know that they have biological family who is unknown. The hunger that I see to know who those people are can be overwhelming. Yes, there are some adaptees who have no interest whatsoever. I see that. But overwhelmingly what I see is it is just when you grow up knowing that the people who raised you don't share DNA with you, and therefore don't look like you, there is so much curiosity, um, just to know who are the people whose DNA I share and what's their story? And even just to see a picture of them sometimes that's all people want. They just desperately want to know. Um, but yeah, also what I've learned walking in this world is that there is no one size fits all story here. Um, I see people who come to the realization, as Dani does and as she writes so beautifully about throughout the whole book, that she has now come to terms with the fact that the father she knew did not contribute half her DNA, but was absolutely her father in every possible way. The man who donated her sperm she has sort of a lovely and cordial relationship with, but he is not her father. He is not the one who taught her to ride a bike and sang her lullabies and brought her to synagogue and, uh, all that good stuff. I see people who have very close and intense relationships with their biological family once they find them, um, and immediately feel more comfortable with their biological family than perhaps they did with the family that raised them. It goes across the gamut. You know, I always tell people before embarking on these sorts of searches, I have seen everything from warm and wonderful acceptance of newfound biological family to quite literally, cease and desist letters. Um, not every birth parent is interested in having a relationship with the child that they place for adoption for a host of reasons. And that's, uh, an awkward, it can be awkward for the person searching, but it's also a valid response. The birth parent has the right not to want to have a relief, I think, in our heads and our sort of folklore. It's like, oh, everything will be wonderful and warm and fuzzy. And it's not always like that at all, right?

Dr. Andrea Bonior: And I think if anything, maybe it points to the idea that ultimately our story is OUR story, and we get to incorporate what matters to us and we get to find meaning in the places and the people that we truly feel have that meaning and that it doesn't have to be, hey, you found out this. Now you've got to do this in terms of your roots or your ancestry. Because the truth is we get to define how we view ourselves, and we get to define our family, really in every sense of the word. And I certainly work with a lot of folks who might be going through estrangement with their family and part of their identity starts to develop a family that is not the family they grew up with. They can start to define their family in different ways. It's so meaningful. And it makes me wonder, you know, even just all of these complicated issues, what would you advise someone who is maybe considering starting this process? So maybe they come from a family where they vaguely know up to their great grandparents on each side, and they think it would kind of be cool to either do some DNA research or some paper research online and family tree types of research. How does somebody even begin this? And are there may be warning signs? You know, how hard do you push? You really want your mom to join this site or take this test and your family members pushing back? Are there ways that you decide that you respect the silence of certain people involved? You know, I feel like it's so fascinating and it has the potential to be so meaningful. And then I also feel like we need to be mindful. We need to go in with eyes wide open, and we need to be respectful of the people in our lives that either might just not share our interest in it or might have something that they don't want to be known. It's so tricky. So for somebody starting out with this, they say, hey, maybe I'll buy this for my parents for Christmas or something. I mean, what kind of things should they be keeping in mind?

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Well, it's interesting because I feel like this conversation, um, that we're having right at this moment would have been wildly different even just a year or two ago. Because I feel like there is more understanding now because so many of these stories have become public of the sorts of explosive family secrets that can come out of DNA tests. Um, that I think it clearly isn't, like, universally known, but it's more widely known that they can have this effect. So obviously, it's very important for people to take a test with the full understanding that it might very well reveal information that you were not expecting. I think they all have a disclaimer on that now. But I think so many people are like, oh, that won't be me.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: That's just it. They might know what happens to others, but that's different than really believing it's a possibility for them.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Yeah. This wasn't from a DNA test, but I have a dear friend who her mother passed away in the last year. And after her mother died, she got a phone call from a woman. Her mother had placed a child for adoption before getting married. Her mother had had a relationship with her birth daughter, but made her swear that she would never tell her children from her marriage until after she died. So when she died, this woman half sister reached out to my friend and my friend texted me, I'm on an episode of The Lost Family. She just couldn't believe that it was happening to her. But it does. And it does. There are an increasing number of people who are having this. So I also want to make clear this might sound strange for somebody who relies so deeply on having people DNA test, but I am not interested in forcing a reluctant tester to test. I have zero interest in doing that. If people have reasons, whatever they are, for not being comfortable putting their DNA in a commercial database, I'm done, I'm out. I'm not in the business of pushing it on anyone. And it's unethical. Like, we have a code that we operate by and people you can only get DNA with informed consent. Um, and I think it's really important that people, before they spit in that vial, think, what if this leads somewhere I was not intending, am I ready for that? Am I OK with that? And I actually occasionally see people who say no. Like, they're just like, I don't know, my grandfather was a bit of a wild card. I don't think I want to go there. I don't want to know what's out there. I don't want to know if I have relatives I'm not expecting, and that's fine. Um, but for some people, it can change lives. I have seen that over and over again. So I always personally tested. Um, I continue to believe that it can do a lot of good. I work specifically now in the world of Holocaust survivors. And it can be for some of them, it can be the only way to get information about themselves. And therefore, it's crucial that others test so that we have a, uh, robust database. So I encourage people to test. But if people have reservations, that's great, and they should be respected.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Yeah, and I'm so glad to hear you say that, because I think at some point it can become like a project in terms of we want these answers no matter what. I've got something I'm searching for and I am doing the investigation. And let's fill in this blank and all we need to do is get this person to take this test and we lose the human aspect of it because it's so intellectually curious. And there's that need, like you said, almost a compulsion. Let's find these answers because it can be so rewarding. But if someone along the way that we want answers from has reservations, they're still a human being and they're not the cog in the wheel of getting to the point of these answers. Right.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: And those can be competing interest. Right. Your desire to know and someone else's desire not to participate in your knowledge journey are both valid and that can be hard to reconcile.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Yes. Especially if someone has grown up with a story that was assumed that it would never really be told. And I am curious if maybe this will change some of the ways that parents maybe tell their children about certain things. I know it certainly changed some of the attitudes about adoption in terms of, hey, the way that we tell this story is part of my child's identity from the beginning and the embracing of knowing more about the circumstances and those kinds of things as compared to a generation or two ago when it was so secretive. Do you think that if there are unusual circumstances in people's upbringing that we're going to get to a point where parents are going to be aware that it's going to come out, so maybe they'll be more likely to be able and be willing to tell the kids from the beginning, hey, this is your story. And it's not something you have to be ashamed of and it's not something you have to be blindsided by at age 30 when you buy a random DNA test. This is your story and you can own it. Now, do you think that might happen?

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Definitely. I mean, I feel like there was just a question in the last week to the Ethicist in the New York Times Magazine about I can't remember the exact scenario. It was like a sibling knew that his father wasn't his sibling's birth father and was he obligated to tell? I might not be remembering that exactly right. But the answer pointed out eventually everyone's going to be able to figure this out with the ubiquitousness of DNA tests. And I feel like that is sort of bubbling up into our cultural understanding. And I think maybe some parents might be seeing this out there and realizing it's time to let their children know that they were donor conceived yes, 40, 50 years ago. Um, and maybe they thought that they could keep silent forever.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Right. Or some donors and that's a whole other conversation, sperm donors, for instance, who never expected that anyone would be contacting them and it was a different era. And now what's the meaning of that? That maybe there are 15 biological children out there? It's certainly very complicated. I must ask too. I imagine when people get findings that they're not expecting or that they're unmoored by. The word unmoored that you use, I think, is so eloquent in terms of how it describes this. Are some of these DNA tests are there ever mistakes? Because I'm sure that's sort of a, uh, go to first response that people have what must be wrong. We grew up together. We have the same parents. This is my biological sister. This must be wrong. Is that something that is ever seen, or is that pretty much not a thing?

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Pretty much not. Uh, the important thing to remember is that commercial DNA tests have two parts. They have the ethnicity pie charts that everybody is sort of familiar with, where, you know, the commercial says the guy grew up thinking he was German, and he traded his leiderhosen for a kilt. Um, and then there is the match list, which is the people with whom you share DNA, um, ranked in order of closeness to you by the amount of DNA that you share. And the ethnicity estimate can have small errors in it. I shouldn't use the word error. Um, ethnicity estimates are not measuring something empirical in your DNA. I always say it's not like taking the PH of a liquid. There is not something in your DNA that will tell you you are 78% from the Iberian Peninsula, okay? There are estimates derived from comparing you to people who are self reported with certain ancestries. So when people come back, zero 5% Papua New Guinea, you shouldn't be then, like, traveling to Papua New Guinea to find your aunt. It could be just a statistical error. However, what I always tell people, if you are seeing huge discrepancies at the continent level, meaning you, um, always grew up believing you are 100%, say, Ashkenazi Jewish, and there is zero Ashkenazi Jewish in your estimates, that is not an error. That is likely a mismatch between what you understood to be your history and those sort of huge discrepancies can't be explained away.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Got it.

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Uh, uh, the second part, the DNA match list. If you are sharing huge amounts of DNA with strangers, that is not an accident and that is not an error. That is because your genealogical tree does not match your biological tree. Um, if you get a parent child match on one of these tests, that is not a mistake. And I can tell you from experience, I have seen so many people call the companies convinced that there is some sort of mistake in play, and then they retest at the next company and get the same exact result. True errors on these tests are like unicorns. Like one in a million. It's not widespread.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: Yeah. So something to be prepared for. And I think people it might be part of their process to say, well, let me double check. Let me triple check, because they need to come to terms with it over a period of time. But it is good to know because I think a lot of us don't really know much about these tests except for a commercial or our coworker did it and found out this kind of fun fact. And actually, that leads me to a final question in terms of some of the fun facts. You know, I know from folks that have done this that there are all kinds of things that come up that are characteristics you are more likely to have this certain treat. Does, uh, your piece smell like asparagus after you've eaten? Asparagus. And some of it, though, of course, can be more serious in terms of health concerns. And I wonder, do those tend to not have mistakes as well? So, for instance, if someone were to find out something medically related from some of these tests about whether it be their predisposition to something, is that generally something to take seriously and incorporate your doctor's opinion about? Or is it something that maybe sometimes there are fluky things that you don't really know to what extent that's really meaningful or true?

Jennifer Mendelsohn: Well, first of all, only a subset of them provide medical information. And I, uh, actually make a point of staying out of that piece of it. Um, but I can tell you that a close friend and colleague of mine in the genealogical community learned accidentally from a 23 and me test that she was a carrier of the BRCA gene. And because of that, went and got tested and actually discovered that she had very, very early breast cancer that never would have been detected, um, because she was young, she was in her 30s, she had no family history, no she wasn't due for her first mammogram, and it saved her life. So, amazing. There is valuable information to be gleaned, um, ah or can be. Like I said, that's not my expertise, so I stay out of it. If you see something troubling or concerning on the medical side, I would urge you to follow up on it. That's my take on that. Follow up with someone who knows what they're talking about and can tell you, oh, it's nothing to worry about. Um, I'm told that I'm at risk for lactose intolerance, which can apparently manifest late in life. So I'm sort of waiting with my tub of ice cream.

Dr. Andrea Bonior: The almond ice cream is really good, too. Made with almond milk, I will say. And there's coconut, uh, milk ice cream as well. So yes. Well, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you today, and I feel like we've only been able to scratch the surface of some of this stuff, but I know there will probably be more questions to come and maybe we can chat again. But it really seems like the bottom line is that, uh, we all have the right to our own story, and we all have the right to find out what matters to us in terms of where we came from. And we have the technology now in ways that we never did before, and there are a lot of ways that it can be overwhelming. So we have to go in with eyes wide open, but ultimately, it can be empowering, because I think the truth very often is empowering, even when it causes some upset initially.

n a roadside in the summer of: 1942

Dr. Andrea Bonior: That's incredible. That gave me chills. What amazing work and what meaningful work. So I just have to say thank you to not just for being here, but for everything that you're doing out there in the world to help people feel connected in the ways that they want to be connected. I think it's impossible to exaggerate just how huge this is in people's lives when it can make such a connection that they didn't have before. So thank you so much.

Thank you for joining me today. Once again, I'm Dr. Andrea Bonior and this has been Baggage Check, with new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Join us on Instagram @baggagecheckpodcast podcast to give your take on upcoming topics and guests. And why not tell your chatty coworker where to find us? Our original music is by Jordan Cooper, cover art by Danielle Merity and my studio security is provided by Buster the Dog. Until next time, take good care.