Family tree surprise

[Yellowlampshade234]

I took a DNA test recently for Ancestry, I’m not particularly interested in my family tree and was given the test as a gift. I took the test and was DNA matched with someone who has turned out to be my nephew.

My father, fathered a child 53 years ago. My father never met the baby, who was adopted. I had zero knowledge of this until the man, who is my nephew got in touch with me and this has all came out.

Whilst my dad has never been able to contact his child, his child has always been able to contact him - but has chosen not to. I stopped messaging my nephew once I found this out as it doesn’t seem right to do this when his mother who was adopted has never been in touch. She will be my half sister. I have no other siblings so whilst it could be nice to have a half sibling is the fact she never contacted my father, sign that she doesn’t want contact from me?

My dad has never known anything about his child because of the adoption so we now have a great deal of information about her that we probably shouldn’t. My nephew claims he doesn’t see his mother often so I’m not sure whether he has told her any of this but it sounded like he hadn’t. I found this out about 6 months ago now and I still feel in limbo about what to do, if anything. It has been a huge shock.

I have been in a similar situation, although it was a bit more distant. Rather than being a half sister, it was my mum's cousin who was fostered but not adopted.

To summarise, I'd say, if your half-sister is on something like Ancestry or MyHeritage (she may be on there but hasn't done a DNA test) then go ahead and contact her directly.

If she isn't on Ancestry then I would keep the contact via your nephew and encourage him to contact his mother and let her know that you exist and to ask if she is interested in exchanging any messages with you.
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If it's of any interest, in our case there was a positive outcome.

All I knew about my mum's cousin was that she was a name on the tree. I knew her date of birth but apart from that there was nothing.

Then my mum did her DNA on Ancestry and a woman living in the USA came up as quite a close match. This was very confusing as we didn't know who she was at all.

So I got in touch and it turned out that she was the grand daughter of my mum's cousin who had been fostered. The grandmother knew nothing of her birth parents (she was fostered at around the age of 3 or 4).

So I was able to fill them in on all the extended family and she was able to fill me in on what my mum's cousin had done since then and who her descendants were. It turns out that she got pregnant to a US airman and gave birth at the age of 17. She married him very shortly before giving birth and then later emigrated to the States.

My mum's cousin was astounded to learn all about her birth family as she never thought that she would every know.

But that's just one example, things may be different with your half-sister.
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Incidentally, my mum's cousin had three siblings and, realising that if one was fostered then the others were likely fostered as well, helped in tracing what had happened to the other children.