Jodi Girard received an email from Ancestry.com on September 28, 2018 that changed her life. She grew up on a rural Iowa farm with two white parents and two white siblings and clearly looked different. Despite that, she never asked her parents why and no one ever talked about it. When the DNA test revealed that she was 46% African American, her life was turned upside down. Discovering that the father who raised her, who loved her, was not her biological father was both devastating and freeing at the same time. For the first time in her life, the image in the mirror made sense and she had people she looked like. On the other hand, she had been telling a narrative her whole life that wasn’t true. She is still working on figuring out what it means to be a biracial woman but has enjoyed getting to know her new half siblings and cousins. She lives in Iowa with her husband Scott on a small hobby farm, where they have raised their five children. She loves gardening, reading, cooking and fossil hunting.

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