A woman has shared emotional footage of the moment she met her biological father for the first time, ending a 16-year search for him.
Deedee Boswell can still remember the day her world was turned upside down. "My mom and I got into an argument when I was 16 and she told me her husband was not my biological father," Boswell told Newsweek. "I never knew prior to that moment, but it made so much sense after she said it. I was always treated very differently from his other children."
Determined to find her father, Boswell turned to DNA testing for answers. A significant number of Americans have used genetic testing to learn about their past, present and future. In 2020, a Health Information National Trend Survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. adults found that 21.6 percent of respondents had undergone a genetic test of some kind. Ancestry tests (15.8 percent) were the most commonly used, followed by genetic health‐risk tests (7.7 percent), high‐risk cancer tests (4.2 percent) and others (1.2 percent).
Though Boswell began by conducting DNA tests with some of her mom's ex-partners, it wasn't until she did an ancestry test in 2013 that she began to finally get some answers. Even then, the results sent her down another rabbit hole. "I didn't recognize any of the names it came back with," she said. "I asked everyone I knew and tons of my mom's old classmates. I got nowhere."
All Boswell had to go off was a surname attributed to a great uncle and great aunt, along with some second cousins. She was able to trace some of their surviving family and reached out on social media.
The response she got wasn't what she had been hoping for.
"They accused me of being a scam artist and wanting money from them because they didn't have any family near that age that had a child my age," she said. "It just wasn't possible, from what they said. They all lived in New York and I was born in Texas."
Finally, this year, Boswell enlisted the help of a team of DNA analysts and private investigators. Within 48 hours, they had pictures, an address, a phone number and a complete family tree for the man they believed to be her biological father.
"I went to his social media and saw we had one mutual friend," Boswell said. "Guess who it was? My mom!"
Boswell was eventually able to reach out to one of his daughters. "They were thrilled to hear from me. They contacted him the next morning and within 24 hours he had traveled from a completely different state [Oklahoma] to where I lived," she said.
Boswell shared footage of that first meeting, which occurred earlier this year, in a video posted to her TikTok comedyangel0718. "It felt weird, to be honest, like a dream," she said. "I didn't know what to expect and I had my guard up. I didn't want to get hurt."
Paternity Test
That was when she learned more about how she came to be. Boswell's mom fell pregnant with her when she was 13. The man suspected of being her biological father went to school with her mom. "That's why his family couldn't believe it to be true because of how old I am," Boswell said. "It's hard to think they would have a child my age at their age."
He told Boswell her mom had always denied she was his daughter. Boswell says her mom "still to this day claims it's not possible." A paternity test said otherwise, with the results indicating he was 99.99 percent likely to be Boswell's biological father.
In time, Boswell got a clearer picture of her father's side of the family. It emerged that part of the reason she had struggled to find her dad a few years back was that the distant family members that showed up on her ancestry test who she reached out to from New York had his mother's maiden name.
She's discovered she has four siblings, including a 10-year-old brother, while her father has met her five kids. "He instantly became a grandfather the day we met," she said. "He has a wonderful wife that my kids call their grandma and they spent tons of time with them this summer. Their grandpa and uncle taught them how to swim."
Boswell said they now speak at least three times a week on the phone and he visits as much as he can. "If I ever need help with the kids he's here in a heartbeat," she said. "He loves being a grandfather. He was shocked at first but he said he always felt like something was missing, as did I. We are a family now."
English (US) ·