When a DNA test reveals pain from the past

When Rev. Trisha Elliott spit in a tube and sent her DNA off for testing in mid-December 2018, she thought she'd learn a little about her cultural heritage.

The testing kit unearthed a long-lost half-brother instead, and adding to her surprise, Elliott realized she knew his family's name as they grew up in neighbouring towns. 

The ordained United Church minister was adopted at birth and was raised in the eastern Ontario town of Morrisburg. 

"I knew people who knew of my brother's family," she told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning. "The other part of this is we were raised in the same communities. We have all the same friends." 

But while learning of new family could potentially be a joyful experience, Elliott said the revelation upended her life and stirred up drama in a family she'd never met.

The 46-year-old said her half-brother was open to meeting with the minister, despite not initially knowing whether her claims were part of some elaborate hoax.

"For the rest of the family it was shocking," she said. "There were things that happened 46 years ago that nobody knew about that immediately came to light by the fact that I exist."

She hasn't been able to speak to the rest of her biological family yet. 

"I don't know firsthand how they're feeling except that [my half-brother has faced] a lot of pressure to try to distance himself from me," she said. 

Pain from the past 

Elliott recently wrote about her family reunion in the Toronto-based magazine Broadview.

It wasn't her first effort to reconnect.

Nine years ago she reached out to her birth mother but discovered her mother wasn't interested in a relationship with her daughter.

Her biological mother didn't share the identity of Elliott's father, though she later learned he was also the father of her half-brother and had died before she could meet him. Elliott and her half-brother, Lorne Neville, have different biological mothers.

Elliott's mother was sent away at 16 to give birth. She blames the culture of shame that persisted in her mother's era for how she's been received. 

"This is what happens when women's sexuality is controlled," she said.

Since Elliott first contacted her half-brother, they've been able to foster a new relationship. She remembers how nerve-racking it was to wait in the restaurant after agreeing to meet with him.

"How do you meet a brother, or a potential brother, you didn't know existed until the day before?" she said. 

Her brother shared similar feelings, she said, and stared at her, unable to believe the resemblance.

"Once he knew the truth, [he wished] he had known sooner so we could have had more time," she said.

Hopes to write more about experience

Elliott said she feels like she's waiting to be adopted all over again, although she believes it's completely legitimate for biological families to not want a relationship with a child put up for adoption.

She'd like to write about what people should and shouldn't do when such children reach out. 

The parents who raised Elliott, conversely, have welcomed their daughter's half-brother into their own life.

"They have been very, very good," she said.

While secrecy shadows the pasts of both siblings, the two are now moving forward and making their own decisions about who they consider family.

"We realized people had been making decisions for us and had been all the way along," she said. "We didn't have any power in that."