A life-changing DNA test

 Life is a well of surprises and unpredicted revelations, some are heartwarming while others fall on us like breaking balls. 

Dyer had one of those revelations that turned life upside down, at the most unexpected moments. Soon after moving in to Virginia with her newly wed husband, she had two beautiful children whom she raised with love. She joined Tallwood Elementary school after a while, a job that was bringing her news she’d never anticipated.

She was an assistant special education teacher at Tallwood Elementary School, Virginia, a position she was most ecstatic about. One that was going about to completely shift her life. 

At the Elementary School, Dyer met a teacher named Nicoll. Even though they could not interact much there as Nicoll completed her teaching at the school and was moving to another Elementary School, they were bound to meet again, under special circumstances..

Even after Nicoll left the Tallwood elementary school, she would still come to events and parties there, where Dyer and her got to know each other a bit more. Dyer befriended one of her colleagues who knew Nicoll too, and she’d always tell her that they were alike in so many things. 

 Even other colleagues often said that she and Nicoll had a very similar personality. They had almost the same way of talking and walking. Some people even said that they look similar as well. So similar they could be sisters, twin sisters even! 

Rachelle Dyer always laughed when people would call her and Nicoll sisters. They would often ask her if she has a twin sister, to which she answers yes, as she did have a twin sister, named Kristelle Arthur Harrington and not Nicoll. 

When people asked Nicoll the same question,  she would laugh at it and would say that she already had a twin sister named Lisa Holley Vann and not Rachelle.It was an odd question to ask, one that turned out to be not so odd after all..

Dyer’s husband was now intrigued, people did have a point, as she and Nicoll did look alike a lot, they resembled each other in so many aspects.  In 2017 he asked her to perform a home DNA test to know for sure if there were any possibilities of having another sibling she didn’t know about. She received the results almost two years later, but she did not get them verified.

 

It was in 2019 that the principal at Tallwood Elementary asked Dyer to at least look for the results of her DNA Test. Surprisingly she found a match,  her DNA matched with a woman named Tracey Hall. But who was she?

Dyer located Hall with the help of the internet. As surprises kept coming her way, she found out that Hall already knew about Dyer. So many questions were brought up, how could she know about her ? And if that was the case, then why hasn’t she reached out to her? Hall’s aunt Janice Moore gave birth to twin daughters who were later put on for adoption. More was yet to be revealed.

Dyer was amazed as she already knew that she and her sister were adopted, and if Moore gave twin daughters for adoption, it made sense that they were those daughters. Yet another shocking piece of information came. Moore’s biological daughters lived at Virginia Beach..

Hall told Dyer that those two sisters had half-sisters. This all the way made Dyer curious as those two sisters were residents of Virginia Beach where Dyer lived. When Dyer asked their names, the reply made her shudder for a moment. She knew she had heard one of those names before.

The sisters’ names were Lisa Holley Vann and Shannon Nicoll. Nicolli was the same woman she met at Tallwood Elementary School. Things made more sense now, as to why people would keep asking if there were sisters.

Dyer was in shock to realize that she was once this close to her half-sister, and later she regretted that she did not get to know her that well. 

 

Before giving up her twins for adoption, Moore made two main conditions to whoever was to adopt them, the first one being that they had to be raised together, the second being raised catholically. 

Two years after giving the twins up for adoption, Moore met a man named Holley. They tied the knot in Virginia and gave birth to two daughters, Vann who was 51 and Nicoll who was 49 then. 

In February 2019, the four sisters met for dinner for the first time. They realized that all four of them looked alike, talked alike and even walked alike, they even had similar voices.

Rachelle recalls, “Both of my children came to the dinner and every time the four of us would laugh they put their hands over their mouths because they couldn’t believe how much we sounded alike. I mean, we were finishing each other’s sentences.” The kids couldn’t believe how similar the aunts and their mom was.

The sisters’ reunion story was so strange and unusual that it gained a lot of popularity. Surprisingly, their past reunion went viral across all platforms and even got them called on the Good Morning America segment. 

People had different responses to this story. While many were amazed others were so touched that they themselves performed a home DNA test to look for  possible matches if any. 

One DNA test changed the life of 4 sisters who never thought life could have any more surprises for them at their age. That's how life strikes, luckily for them, its strike was a happy one.