I’m a high school English teacher and I met Sharon when I started working at my current school. Sharon was one of the ladies in our student services office, so I’d meet her every morning when I went to pick up my roll, or if I just needed to check in about something. She was my first point of call every morning. I thought she was lovely. She was incredibly approachable. If I ever had any quick questions about anything, I never felt afraid to ask her. We’d have a chat every morning and got along really well.
I’d done one of those Ancestry tests before I started working at the school but I hadn’t looked through my DNA matches properly yet. I’d been at the school for about four or five months when my mum started complaining that she didn’t know anything about her side of the family, so I opened Ancestry back up and had a better look at my matches. That’s when I saw Sharon’s photo in my family tree. I went, hang on a minute, scrolled back and yelled, “Oh my god, that’s the lady from the office!” I ran and found my mum and told her. It was a Sunday night and I couldn’t wait to get to work to ask Sharon if it was actually her.
I got to school the next day and went straight into the student services office. I held a screenshot of our match up on my phone, passed it across the desk to Sharon and said, is this you? She leaped up and went, “Oh my god, it is me! What’s going on? What’s happening?” And I said, “I think we’re related.” It was just incredibly exciting.
We sat down, tried to figure out exactly how we were related and who we were related through. Then Sharon went home that night and made up a little family tree to track it on a piece of paper. It turns out our grandmothers are double cousins – so two brothers from one family married two sisters from another family. That makes us fourth cousins.
Our families once both lived in Penrith in western Sydney. But Sharon’s family stayed around there, whereas mine ended up moving out to the Blue Mountains – they then totally lost touch with each other. Generations later, both of our families somehow ended up in Wollongong and then Sharon and I started working at the same school.
Really, the funny thing was just the coincidence of it all – somehow, from families that were living so far away, we’ve ended up in the same workspace in the same town. It’s just crazy.
We became a lot closer after finding out that we’re related. We had, obviously, a lot to talk about! Sharon ended up coming over for morning tea with my family and we went through the family history together. And she’d done serious research – she had folders and binders full of stuff and was taking us through all of this work that she’d done.
Sharon’s youngest daughter is a student at my school, so we make sure we get a family Santa photo together every year. I’ve had her for the odd lesson or two and she’ll come in like, “Hi cuz – I mean, miss!”
Sharon and I also introduced our two mums at the school musical, which was cute.
I think discovering that Sharon and I are related has added a lot of joy to my life. Sharon has left the school now but we keep in contact. She’s just another nice person that I have in my life who is really supportive, always around for a chat with and would be there if I needed help. I think we are similar in a lot of ways, especially our temperament. We’re both very extroverted, social, cheerful and optimistic.
We always got along really well because we both like to chat. That definitely makes sense now, if we look at the fact we’re related. It’s one of those natural fits. If I had to be related to anyone, I’m so glad it’s Sharon!
• This article was amended on 14 October 2022. A caption was changed to clarify that Gillian is Sharon’s daughter.
