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By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
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Kenzie Winfield from Utah spent years wondering who her birth father was and where he might be, until a spur-of-the-moment DNA test changed everything.
Growing up, Winfield says she only knew “small details” about her biological dad. “I had one picture of him my mom gave me that I carried around with me for years,” Winfield told Newsweek. “I knew his first name but not his last. I also knew I had a half brother who was older than me, but that was it.”
Research shows that not knowing a biological parent can make it harder to develop a clear sense of identity, because people often lack what psychologists call “genetic mirroring”—seeing their own traits reflected in biological relatives—which helps anchor self-understanding; without this, individuals may experience “genealogical bewilderment,” a term coined by psychologist H.J. Sants to describe the confusion and uncertainty about one’s origins and place in the world.
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Winfield spent years talking to her husband about her birth father and the unanswered questions she had about her life. “Finally, one night we were watching a television show about adoption, and I mentioned some of those same feelings,” she said. “My husband immediately got on the computer and signed me up for a DNA test.”
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A significant proportion of Americans are turning to mail-in DNA tests to learn more about their family and heritage. A 2025 YouGov poll of just over 1,000 U.S. adults found that about 1 in 5 Americans (21 percent) have taken a home DNA test, while the same survey showed that 43 percent of Americans have either taken a test themselves or have a family member who has.
For Winfield, the DNA test immediately helped her learn more about her heritage. “I’m biracial and had never really felt that connected to my Black heritage, and it showed me links all the way back to where my ancestors were living in West Africa before being brought over to the United States as slaves,” she said.
Her results revealed something even more significant, though: a match to a person with a 50/50 chance of being either her father or her brother. “I saw the name and the age and knew it had to be my dad,” Winfield said.
Winfield messaged her dad via the DNA testing service's website. “I think you might be my father,” she wrote after introducing herself. “I don’t know a lot about you, but I would love to get in contact.” Her father responded, saying: “I’m usually a man of many words, but honestly I’m a bit speechless right now. I’d like it if we could chat a bit.”
They talked, and eventually Winfield agreed to fly out and meet her dad. Seeing him for the first time—watching the photo she had held onto for so long become a reality—was something she will never forget. “When I came out of the airport and saw his face the first time I flew out to meet him, it was one of those strange moments where you know you are experiencing a core memory as it’s happening, analyzing and observing it stain your brain forever,” Winfield said. “There are only a few times in my life I’ve felt like that.”
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Speaking to him and learning all about his life, Winfield felt something she had never experienced before. “It was a really safe, warm feeling I didn’t even realize I had been longing for my whole life,” she said. “I learned he came from a big family of eight kids. I had not just one brother, but two.”
She also learned about how he met her mother and why he could not be in her life at the time. “They were very young and hardly knew each other,” Winfield said. “My mother’s family didn’t approve of them being together, and neither of them had the resources to raise me without their help, so he ended up out of my life as a result.”
More than that, in meeting her dad, Winfield also learned something about herself. “I learned we had a ton of the same interests, down to the kind of cars we drove and the whiskey we enjoyed,” she said. “I learned a lot about him, but mostly I learned about myself as a person at my core.”
For years, all Winfield had was a grainy old photo of her father. Now everything has changed.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Emma Lee-Sang.
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