An adopted woman who spent her whole life searching for her birth family finally tracked them down using a genealogy website and Facebook. Megan Kennedy, 37, grew up knowing she was adopted.
On her 18th birthday she applied for her original birth certificate and found her biological mum's name to be Patti Neil. In December 2018 new records were made available on ancestry.com.
After trawling the site, Megan found her mum's details on the 27th page. She discovered Patti lived in Scotland, where Megan was set to travel in June 2019.
Megan tracked down Patti, 64, a retired sales person, on Facebook, who was delighted to hear from her. The pair reunited in Glasgow, sitting and chatting for hours.
Megan then found she had a genetic match with a half-sister, Kayla, 30, in 2018, via GEDmatch and then an aunt, Kathy, 66, in September 2020. These matches led her to discover her biological father, Johnny Cavalier, 62, a retired businessman.
Mum Patti died in February 2020, while dad Johnny died in February 2022. Despite losing both birth parents, Megan feels she has found her "true identity" and "all her people".
Megan, a wedding photographer, from Birmingham, Alabama, USA, said: "It's almost hard to put into words how it feels. It is an immense feeling of peace.
"Every birthday I spent hours looking for Patti, it's amazing to think I will never have to look again. It's bittersweet.
"But I am so grateful I reconnected with my biological parents before they passed." Megan reached out to her biological mum, Patti, on Facebook after discovering she lived in Scotland.
Patti didn’t reply straight away, and Megan was apprehensive if she would even see it or respond. "I wrote 'Hi this may be an odd message, I'm looking for my biological mom, her name was Patti Neil Whiting, I thought I looked a lot like you.'
"Patti replied: 'Oh my goodness. 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 come true, every birthday I’ve ever had I’ve looked for her.”
Megan was "over the moon" when her biological mum, Patti, agreed to meet up in June 2019. She said: “I was so nervous but so excited.
“I felt every feeling you could have felt. We met at Glasgow train station and literally ran across the platform to hug each other.
“Everyone watching cried, it was like a movie.” Patti explained her mother, Megan's grandmother, was from Wales. Her father, Megan's grandfather, was from Fort Worth, Texas, US, and he fought during the Second World War.
Patti who had dual citizenship, grew up Fort Worth and when she was 27 went to go and live with her sister, Sherrie, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Patti who was married at the time, worked on the boats as a deck hand and fell for "ladies man", Johnny, 24, who was a diver.
She told Megan they had a month-long relationship and that's when their daughter was conceived. Patti says she didn’t tell Johnny when she fell pregnant as she was already married.
She says she gave Megan up in the hope she would have a better life. She gave birth in Mobile, Alabama, US, where Megan was adopted by Arthur Forehand, 71, a retired pharmacist, and Cassie Wilson, 72, a medical transcriptionist, through an adoption agency.
As for her father, Patti couldn’t remember his name, but Megan received a DNA match on a website for a half-sister, Kayla, 30, a stay-at-home mum, from New Orleans, Louisiana, US. "I was ecstatic, I cried."
The sisters downloaded their ‘raw DNA’ and uploaded it onto another website GEDmatch. The data comparison revealed they shared an ‘X chromosome’ - meaning they shared a father.
In September 2020, the sisters were on FaceTime and they both received an ancestry.com match out of the blue. The website revealed they had a match, an aunt, Kathy Colllins, 66, in Highlands, Texas, and they quickly reached out.
Kathy told them: “There’s going to be some surprises, you need to buckle in.” Their aunt revealed she had two brothers, one had been married since high school, so they ruled him out as a potential dad.
She then sent over photographs of her other brother, Johnny. “When I saw the photo, my heart dropped to my toes," Megan said.
“I knew it was him, he looked like Kayla." Kathy reached out to Johnny on the girls’ behalf, and he asked for them to send letters.
Megan said: “He completely accepted us both, he was so open and sweet and wanted to get to know us. He has a wife, Ragnhildur, 35, two years younger than me and a seven-year-old child, Ajay, my little brother".
Johnny and his family all lived in Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras. In September 2021 Megan was set on travelling to meet her father but she had her three-year-old, Cora, flights were "extortionate" and the pandemic still meant travel restrictions were in place.
They decided to hold off but in November 2021, Johnny was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease and Megan didn't realise just how ill he was. Megan was booked to finally meet her father in January 2022 but was struck with Covid and couldn’t travel.
Two weeks later, Megan received an earth-shattering phone call from his wife, Ragnhildur, to say Johnny was in hospital and "it wasn’t looking good". He died a few hours later on February 17 2022.
Megan said: “That was terrible. I hated we got Covid the week we were meant to go.
"I’ve had therapy that was provided to me through my adoption agency, but I miss my biological parents every day.” In March 2022, Megan travelled down to Roatán to spread her late father’s ashes in the Caribbean sea in an emotional celebration of his life on a boat.
“We all spread his ashes in the sea and it was the only time I got to touch and hold him," she said. During the boat ride Megan reflected on her life and the new relationships she has built.
She said: “We sat on the boat and stared out into the horizon. I thought about where this journey has taken me to find all of my people.”
Megan met her little half-brother Ajay, seven, for the first time and her step-mum Ragnhildur. On her ancestral journey she has met her aunt, Kathy, 66, and discovered another sister, Jennifer, 36, who is Patti’s daughter conceived three months after she put Megan up for adoption.
“I always had a feeling I didn’t belong and when my husband, Lee, and I married in Louisiana in 2011 I felt a strange sense of belonging, as if I were at peace," she said. “I feel like a transformed person from the woman I was in 2019, I have found all of my people.
“When you look at your biological parents and see your features in them, it is the purest self you have ever known."
