Heather Jayne will always remember the time she went to Los Angeles to celebrate Juneteenth in 2022 - the national holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery. Of course, it is an important holiday for Americans, marking the end of the Civil War, but for Heather, it was also the first time she was able to embrace being Black - a fact she had just only discovered a few weeks prior via an Ancestry DNA test.
The test she did to find out her roots a few weeks before showed her she was in fact 30% African American, and also matched her with her cousin Linda. A fortnight later she was on a plane to meet her relative, and was greeted in arrivals with a big hug from Linda and her sister, Brenda. ‘They said, ‘You're home. You're with your family,’” TV presenter Heather, 34.
The sisters then organised a big party for Heather to celebrate her heritage. “They called it my ‘coming out as Black party’, and they got me all these things like t-shirts which said Black mixed with this and that, Black wine, Black magic, all these things. They then took me to a Juneteenth celebration at the Hollywood Bowl. And it was just a whole big celebration of being Black. It was just the most beautiful thing.”
Heather Jayne with her brother and sister in Chester (Collect)Growing up, Heather had always looked different to her five siblings - with darker skin and curlier hair, but she had always put this down to genes. “I obviously knew I looked a little bit different but just kind of put it down to just genetics being odd. It sounds really silly but I thought I got my curly hair from my granddad,” says TV presenter Heather. “Only it turns out my granddad had a perm in the eighties. It was not curly hair!” I remember one time someone I was sitting with my whole family and a waitress, asked, ‘Where's your parents? Where's your family?’ And I was with my family!”
Then, aged 14, her mother dropped a bombshell, revealing that the man she thought was her father wasn’t her real dad. Her biological father was someone her mother had met while living in America, and he had never been told of her existence. “It was a big shock, and I wasn't really given much further information,” says Heather. ”I was just told his name, Smith, but I wasn’t sure if that was a lie because it is a common surname. I never really was able to ask about things. So I just kind of didn’t. I wondered about it a lot. I just never spoke about it to other people.”
Two strangers with exactly the same name and near-identical looks take DNA test
Jaydah, Milton and Heather are happily reunited (Collect)
Jamil, Josh, Jaydah, Heather and dad Milton, with Josh’s son JJ (Collect)When she was 18, Heather - who is no longer close to her mother - moved to London and met more people from diverse backgrounds and they would often ask her about her heritage. “I didn't really understand who I was, and I think I struggled a lot to kind of find my own identity because of that,”she says. The coronavirus lockdowns gave her a lot of time to think, and in 2022, upon seeing a video on TikTok about someone doing an Ancestry DNA test, she decided to bite the bullet.
“I actually had the test for about three months and I didn't do it. Then after a particularly good day I decided it was time.” The results came back quickly and she was surprised to learn that she was 30% African American, with family members originating from Western Africa and settling in Georgia and Florida. “I went from knowing absolutely nothing about my background, to not just finding out not only was African-American, I had this whole history of my ancestors,” says Heather. “It was very overwhelming and very emotional.”
The Ancestry test also matched her with her half-sister Jaydah Smith, as well as cousin Linda. Not knowing family circumstances, she contacted the cousin instead of her sister, who was delighted to hear from her and immediately wrote back and she went to visit Linda and Brenda, who she now calls her aunts.
Heather with dad Milton and and brother Jamil (Collect)While in LA, she also contacted her sister Jaydah, 29, and the two FaceTimed and instantly clicked, and are now "best friends." She also spoke with her father Milton, 68, on the phone. “He said, ‘I've got you, I'm here for you. If you need anything, I'm your dad, just know this, okay?’” says Heather. She returned to England - and had to wait until October, to meet her direct family, who live in Florida. Finally, at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, the big reunion happened.
“I remember him turning up and, my sister Jaydah texted that they were outside in the carpark. So I ran outside and I remember just running and we gave each other the biggest hug. And then my dad came up the steps and we hugged each other for ages and I was crying - happy crying. It was instantly amazing.”
Her father, who works in property, was so much like Heather, she almost couldn’t believe it. “As soon as he saw me he said, ‘I know you’re my daughter’,” she says. “We're just so similar in our personalities. Like as much as we are both people-people. We're both also like fake extroverts, if that makes sense, as we are both really homebodies. We are also both obsessed with politics and world news and culture. He has introduced me to basketball, and now I love it. I even go and watch basketball in London.” She also met her other half-siblings Jamil, 37, Josh, 41, and 44-year-old Milton Jnr. as well as the rest of the family - and they have all formed a very close bond.
“I could cry just thinking about it, to be honest,” says Heather, tearing up. “From the moment I found out I had a different dad and my dad was possibly mixed race or something I had these dreams of my dad coming to get me. It is so silly, but when you fall out with your parents, or argue with your mum when you're 15 and she annoys you, I would tell myself that it was okay and that my dad was going to come and save me one day. But obviously he wasn't because he didn't know of my existence,” she says.
“I had this fairytale in my mind and it came true. It sounds like something out of a movie. But what do you do when all your wildest dreams come true? Everything you could ever dream of. It is so overwhelming. It was just like a fairytale and I thought I was living in a Disney film. It was just too perfect. It is all perfect.”
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