Amanda Arnold never could have expected it.
Amanda Arnold never expected she’d find her birth mom when she took a DNA test to discover more about her heritage.
The 30-year-old has always known she was adopted but around Thanksgiving she took a 23andMe test and ended up finding her biological mother just a short time later.
"We got the results back a few weeks later, and that was fascinating," Arnold said. "Then, about a month later, I was at work and I got a message that I had a new DNA relative. I open the website and there it was: Lesia Williams is your mother, predicted."
Arnold said she began crying. She reached out to Leisa Williams, and told her who she was.
They exchanged numbers and spoke that night.
"It was like an out-of-body experience — I never experienced something like that," Williams said. "I had of course thought about her for 30 years and every birthday celebrated and you know, wondered."
Arnold then found out she had two fully biological sisters, Devyn and Brittany, and a brother.
“I was really young and I was not married and I thought I was actually going to keep her and then I realized that this is not the life that you know that I want her to live in and so I made a decision to place her up for adoption," Williams said.
Arnold's biological father and mother later married.
Her sisters had been searching for Amanda for years, but to no avail.
The DNA test changed all of that, and after talking on the phone and getting to know one another, the pair met for the first time in March.
In an emotional video of the moment, Arnold embraces her two sisters and mother.
"To have [a] part of me that I haven’t known complete — I mean, it’s just amazing," Arnold said.
The family joined in New York last week for a brunch, sponsored by 23andMe, and celebrated an early Mother’s Day.
“We are on opposite sides of the country, so to be all together is very exciting,” Brittany Oberstein said.
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