Two half-sisters who hadn't met until a DNA test discovered they had both named their kids after each other.
Jessica, 48, who wishes to keep her surname private, met Nicole Chalawich, 53, for the first time in July last year.
Jessica, whose mother was adopted, had always been curious about her family and ordered a DNA test from Ancestry.com.
Nicole, who'd already done a DNA test, was checking her profile one day and was shocked to find she had new genetic match - a half sister on her paternal side.
She contacted Jessica over social media and the pair decided to meet on July 28, 2023.
Jessica, 48, who wishes to keep her surname private, met Nicole Chalawich, 53, for the first time in July last year.
Jessica, whose mother was adopted, had always been curious about her family and ordered a DNA test from Ancestry.com.
Nicole, who'd already done a DNA test, was checking her profile one day and was shocked to find she had new genetic match - a half sister on her paternal side.
She contacted Jessica over social media and the pair decided to meet on July 28, 2023.
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FunTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Nicole Chelowick, I'm 52, from Waterford, Michigan, and I found my sister a year ago
00:05by accident with Ancestry.
00:07Hi, I'm Jessica, I'm 49, and I'm also from Waterford, and I found my sister last year
00:15through Ancestry.
00:18I initially decided to go and get an Ancestry DNA test done because my mother was adapted
00:26and she looked for her biological mother her whole life.
00:30And unfortunately, she passed away before she was able to do that.
00:34And I was trying to locate who I thought was my family, because they were already on Ancestry,
00:40and I couldn't find them.
00:41And I was like, there's all these people I don't recognize.
00:45And so I just kind of let it go, I guess, you know, life got busy.
00:51And a friend of mine asked me one time, hey, did you ever, you know, find out about that
00:56DNA test?
00:57And I was like, yeah, matter of fact, I did.
00:58And so I pulled my phone up to show them.
01:02And that's when I discovered her message.
01:05And so I got home and I told my husband, look at this letter.
01:08And he said, well, you know, that sounds like she's related to you, not your mom.
01:17And so from there, I kind of put two and two together and realized that my father is
01:23not my father that well, well, my biological father is not my Bala, you know, she just
01:29she realized she had more fathers than she knew when I raised her and was her dad and
01:36then one that actually created her and didn't nobody knew my dad did not know everybody's
01:41gonna everybody involved in the story except for us is gone.
01:45So that's where left each other.
01:49But there were lots of other signs to that were true.
01:52I mean, she couldn't even believe my middle name because we share the same middle name.
01:56Yeah, that was great.
01:57I think her mom must have known who the father was, because she did give her that name.
02:02So I think that was kind of her mother's way of leaving a message behind for her that we're
02:07sisters.
02:08There were other things.
02:09I mean, we named our children after each other, and we never knew about each other.
02:12So my daughter's Jessica, just like her.
02:15I named my oldest son, Michael, and my biological father, our father, his name is Michael.
02:21Really weird.
02:22The funny thing was my whole life.
02:24I never looks like anyone in my family.
02:26I had this nose.
02:28And I would ask everyone, who do I look like?
02:30Am I am I really related to these people?
02:34So when I found out that he wasn't really my biological father, and then I seen a picture
02:40of my my my biological father, it all started to click and make sense.
02:45I look a lot like him.
02:46I have that nose.
02:48I was shocked.
02:50I was I was really upset initially, just because I, I felt a loss of my father all over again.
02:59I'm not losing my father, I'm gaining another father and a sister, and this whole family
03:04that I didn't know that I had.
03:06So within, I would say 10 minutes, I went through a lot of emotions.
03:12I felt very alone at that time in my life.
03:16I've lost virtually everybody.
03:19And so to realize that I have a sister, like, um, it's great, and awesome that we have so
03:27much in common.
03:28And we actually love these sisters.
03:29And we are a lot of life.
03:31And it's really weird.
03:32And I've always wanted a sister, although we didn't grow up together.
03:36It was really emotional, but I just I went up, it's a few hours north of where we live
03:41in Michigan, and her son was getting married, and I just went up there and met her.
03:47And we stayed the week together.
03:48I don't know.
03:49It was, it was weird.
03:50It's like, I don't want to say it's like, we've always known each other.
03:54But it's like, I'm having a friend that you haven't seen for a long time.
03:57It's like, we just, I mean, we just embraced immediately, like, and we're just friends.
04:03It's just, it's crazy.
04:05There's been no effort.
04:06It's just been very easy.
04:08I think that we found each other exactly when we needed to.
04:11Yeah, it might have been hard when we were younger, even though we always say that, that
04:15we should have known each other when we were younger, we might have been competitive.
04:19And I don't know, I'm convinced that she was probably in the congregation of my church
04:25the day that I was confirmed and baptized when I was 14.
04:31Because we went to the same church.
04:33Yeah.
04:34And I mean, there are a lot of churches, there are even a lot of Lutheran churches.
04:38But when we were younger with our grandparents, we were both, yeah, we went to the same Roladium,
04:43we went and roller skated, we went to the same movie theater.
04:45I collect bees and intuition about things.
04:50Yeah, we both love bees.
04:53We both like to go rock hunting and, you know, there's a lot of similarities.
04:57Yeah, our birthdays are only a couple days apart in February.
05:01We both have ties to her, one of her very good friends lives in the UK.
05:05And then as I said, my mom's, I found my mom's biological sisters on England.
05:11And she came over to the United States when she was young.