Stay up to date with the latest with our WalesOnline newsletter
We have newsletters
A woman in a row who spent her entire life searching for her biological family has still been reunited with her family through an online genealogy page and Facebook. Megan Kennedy, 37, grew up knowing she was being followed.
On her 18th birthday, she applied for her original birth certificate and discovered that her birth mother was named Patti Neil. In December 2018, new recordings were made in ancestry. com.
After browsing the site, Megan discovered her mother’s touch data on page 27. He discovered Patti lived in Scotland, where Megan was scheduled for June 2019.
Megan discovered Patti, 64, a retired saleswoman, on Facebook, who was thrilled to hear her. The couple met in Glasgow, sitting and chatting for hours.
Megan then discovered she had a genetic fit with a half-sister, Kayla, 30, in 2018, GEDfit and then with an aunt, Kathy, 66, in September 2020. These correspondences led her to notice her biological father, Johnny Cavalier, 62. . , a retired entrepreneur.
Mom Patti passed away in February 2020, while Dad Johnny passed away in February 2022. Despite the loss of her biological parents, Megan feels she has discovered her “true identity” and “all her people. “
Megan, a wedding photographer from Birmingham, Alabama, USAHe said, “It’s almost hard to put into words how you feel. It’s a great sense of peace. “
“Every birthday I’ve spent hours for Patti, it’s amazing to think I’ll never have to look at her again. It’s bittersweet.
“But I’m so thankful that I reconnected with my bio before I passed away. “Megan contacted her birth mother, Patti, on Facebook after discovering she lived in Scotland.
Patti didn’t respond immediately and Megan was afraid to even see or respond. “I wrote, ‘Hi, maybe that’s a message, I’m looking for my birth mom, her call was Patti Neil Whiting, I think she looked a lot like you.
Patti said, ‘Oh my God, Megan, you’re beautiful, I was just thinking about you last night. ‘
“I screamed, it was a guttural scream. Every dream and wish I had fulfilled, each and every birthday I had, I looked it up. “
Megan “on the moon” when her birth mother, Patti, agreed to reunite in June 2019. She said: “I’m so nervous but so excited.
“I felt all the emotions you might have felt. We met at the Glasgow exercise station and literally ran to the platform to kiss.
“Everyone cried, it was like a movie. ” Patti explained that her mother, Megan’s grandmother, from Wales. Her father, Megan’s grandfather, from Fort Worth, Texas, USA. In the U. S. , he fought in World War II.
Patti, who had dual citizenship, grew up in Fort Worth and, at age 27, went to live with her sister, Sherrie, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Patti, who married at the time, worked on ships as a sailor and fell in love with “womanizer,” Johnny, 24, who is a diver.
She told Megan they had a month-long relationship and that’s when her daughter conceived. Patti says she didn’t tell Johnny when she got pregnant because she was already married.
She says she abandoned Megan in hopes of a better life. She gave birth in Mobile, Alabama, USA an adoption agency.
As for her father, Patti didn’t know her name, but Megan got a DNA fit on an online page for a half-sister, Kayla, 30, a homemaker, from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Ecstatic in the U. S. , I cried. “
The sisters uploaded their “raw DNA” and uploaded it to the GEDmatch website. Comparison of knowledge revealed that they shared an “X chromosome,” meaning they shared a father.
In September 2020, the sisters were on FaceTime and won an unannounced ancestry. com match. They revealed they had one party, an aunt, Kathy Colllins, 66, in Highlands, Texas, and communicated temporarily.
Kathy told them, “There are going to be surprises, you have to stick to it. “His aunt revealed that he had two brothers, one of whom had been married since high school, so he was excluded as a possible father.
Then he sent pictures of his other brother, Johnny. ” When I saw the photo, my center tiptoed,” Megan said.
“I knew him, he looked like Kayla. ” Kathy contacted Johnny on behalf of the girls and he asked them to send letters.
Megan said: “He accepted us completely, was so open and kind and sought to get to know us. He has a wife, Ragnhildur, 35, two years younger than me, and a seven-year-old son, Ajay, my little brother. “
Johnny and his circle of relatives all lived on Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras. In September 2021, Megan was willing to meet her father, but she had her three-year-old daughter, Cora, the flights were “exorbitant. “And the pandemic still meant there were restrictions.
They made the decision to wait, but in November 2021, Johnny was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease and Megan didn’t realize how bad she was. Covid and could not travel.
Two weeks later, Megan received a heartbreaking phone call from his wife, Ragnhildur, to tell her that Johnny was in the hospital and “not doing well. “He passed away a few hours later, on February 17, 2022.
Megan said, “It’s terrible. I hated that we had Covid the week we had to go.
“I was treated through my adoption agency, but I miss my birth parents every day. “Life on a boat.
“We all scattered his ashes in the sea and that was the only time I could touch him and hug him,” she said. During the boat trip, Megan reflected on her life and the new relationships she has built.
She said: “We sat on the boat and looked at the horizon. I have an idea of where this adventure took me for all my people. “
Megan met her seven-year-old younger half-brother Ajay for the first time and her Ragnhildur. On her ancestral journey, she met her aunt, Kathy, 66, and discovered another sister, Jennifer, 36, who is Patti’s daughter conceived 3 months after giving Megan up for adoption.
“I felt like I didn’t belong and when my husband, Lee, and I got married in Louisiana in 2011, I felt a strange sense of belonging, like I was at peace,” she said. No one from the woman I was in 2019 discovered all my people.
“When you look at your biological parents and see your characteristics in them, it’s the purest self you’ve ever known. “