DNA tests may reveal some wild family secrets. Just ask Farrah Hiji-Holmes, who has discovered she has a secret brother.
Hiji-Holmes, 52, always joked that she must have been “switched at birth” because she felt “nothing like” her family. She often teased her family for being weird, telling them, “There’s no way I could be part of such a weird family.”
Share your story with MirrorKhiji-Holmes said she took the DNA test as a gag.
“So I did a DNA test as a joke and made my mom do it too. She is my mother, there is no doubt about that,” confirmed Hiji-Holmes.
However, her results unexpectedly revealed “close compatibility with a man” named Steve Bolton, 62, who was initially suspected of being “a cousin or someone close.”
Wondering about the results, Hiji-Holmes began an investigation.
None of her relatives knew anything about Bolton. However, she was able to find him online and they started messaging. Hiji-Holmes eventually discovered that Bolton was actually her half-brother.
After chatting on WhatsApp and making video calls for 18 months, the siblings finally decided to meet in person.
“It’s absolutely the same as seeing the Pope in the flesh. My friends who saw him say that he is the spitting image of dad, ”said Hiji-Holmes.
It turns out the half-siblings share the same father, Dr. Mohammad Elijaz Hiji, who had a relationship with Bolton’s mom in the 1960s during a trip to London.
After Hiji returned to his home country of Pakistan, he became the father of Hiji-Holmes, her sister, and three other half-siblings that Hiji-Holmes already knew about.
Hiji, who died in 1998, was also unaware that he was Bolton’s father.
After figuring out the chronology of events, Hiji-Holmes sent the information to her mom to make sure their details were correct. “She said that Steve is most likely my stepbrother. My father took care of all his children and if he knew he had another child, we would know about it,” she explained, adding: “He would have made sure that he was also part of our family.” .
Unfortunately, Bolton did not know who his father was all his life. After his mother died of pneumonia, Bolton spent time in and out of orphanages before he was eventually adopted by a Canadian family in Toronto.
“After waiting so long, it’s hard to believe that this has happened. It’s completely surreal. I didn’t know how to process it,” Bolton shared, adding that as he got older, a friend helped him master the English language. birth certificate.
“My wife did all the research and convinced me to go to Ancestry.com,” he continued. “It’s really amazing.”
Now Bolton is urging other people who have been adopted to research their lineage. They may just find out that they have more family than they think.
15 Stunning QAnon Family Stories