How To Find Yourself – Genetically Speaking

I’ll admit that like many of you I am still recovering from the recent election results. This election season has been draining, bitter and caused our indivisible nation to crack right down the middle. Slowly, I have begun realizing that now more than ever what humanity needs is to come together. Perhaps the cure for this hangover could be delivered in the form of travel. No, I am not talking cynical rants about leaving the country but rather real exploration of diverse cultures and leaving your comfort zone to expand your mind and see things from a different perspective.

As many of you know (and for those who don’t and just stumbled upon this travel blog fortuitously) Manu and I have always loved to travel and would take advantage of any opportunity possible to roam around the Earth. Traveling through South America last year was one of the most satisfying and eye opening experiences of my life and I can only dream that everyone could be lucky enough to experience a similar journey.

Through talking to people in different countries one begins to realize a common thread- we all want the same things. We want those we love to be well, we want to be happy with where we are in the universe and at the core we want the world to be a better place. If you’re still reading this I can already imagine some of you rolling your eyes at this seemingly trite idea but the fact remains- we are all the same.

To explore this concept further Manu and I decided to obtain a genetic test kit from 23andMe and dive deeper into our ancestry. We recently received our results and were surprised by what we discovered. Excited to write a post about it and to relieve some stress caused by all of the negativity of the past few days, I put pen to paper. I think now may be a good time to share the results with you and drive home the point that we are not Republicans, Democrats, Americans or foreigners. We are simply human and we should treat everyone we encounter with the same respect we would expect for ourselves.

 23andMe + Results

• Order your kit online ($99- Ancestry kit or $199 – Health + Ancestry kit) and it will be shipped directly to you.
• The kit (pictured above) will contain detailed instructions including how to properly collect your saliva and package the sample.
• The kit will contain a box with prepaid postage in which to securely send your samples back to their lab.
• After a few weeks (6-8 weeks) you will obtain a report with your results similar to the one below. They’ll even send you email updates on how far along the process is. (I’ve only included a part of mine but the full report is more extensive)

Through travel and discovery of your ancestry your mind is opened wider than ever before and there is no room for hate or discrimination. Knowing at the base what makes you “You” and accepting others for who they are is a rudimentary aspect of being human. The results we obtained through the test have inspired Manu and I to add even more places to our ever growing list of destinations we would like to visit. We hope to inspire you with our past and future travel tales and would love to hear your feedback.

Have you ever done any research into your ancestry? What surprised you?

Want to try the test out for yourself? Click Here!