REUNITED REAL LIFE
Laura McLean, 33, from Milton Keynes, discovered an entire family online...
Picking up a brush, I gazed curiously at my reflection in the mirror.
Where do I come from?
Growing up, I’d always known I was adopted – being mixed-race with white parents, there was no denying it.
Back in Glasgow in the early ‘90s, no one else looked like me.
It was never a big deal to me – I knew I was wanted and loved, and I had a happy childhood.
I never felt I was missing anything and I never had a yearning desire to find out about my birth parents – although I knew I’d be supported if I ever wanted to.
But now and then, I would find myself thinking...
Where do I come from? When I turned 16, I felt a turning point as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake.
At 16, I was able to go and find my birth parents, if I wanted to.
I didn’t know a lot about them and knowing the option was now there, a seed planted in my mind. But I still wasn’t quite ready.
I’d be opening up a can of worms. Will I even find anyone?
What if they didn’t want to know me? What if they didn’t like me? It was a huge leap of faith.
As I got older, I moved down to Milton Keynes from Glasglow. Four years ago I met my partner Abbie, 29.
Between her and my Romanian rescue dog, I didn’t feel like I needed anyone else in my life. But I still always came back to that question.
Where do I come from?
‘I’ll do it one day,’ I always told Abbie. ‘I’m just not there yet.’
I’d be opening up a can of worms
I knew it would take a lot of work. I knew nothing about my biological parents, not even a name. The only thing I knew was that my birth name had been Shanelle.
But when lockdown hit back in 2020, I had time to reflect on who I was and what I wanted from life.
I started training to be a mindset and behavioural change coach alongside my full-time job, and it gave me a new-found confidence. I went on a journey of self-discovery.
This is the time, I thought. There’s a big chunk of myself that I just don’t know about, and it’s time to find out my origin story.
I needed to figure out who I truly was – and I was finally at the stage where I knew that if I got a positive answer then great, but if I didn’t, I knew I could handle it.
‘What if I’ve got siblings?’ I said to Abbie, as we chatted over dinner. ‘Who knows what family I have.’
I tried not to create a picture of them in my mind as I didn’t want to be disappointed, but it was hard.
‘You’ll never know unless you start looking,’ Abbie said.
So chatting to a few friends who’d done DNA tests before, I signed up to 23AndMe.
Logging onto the website, I ordered a kit and waited anxiously
