How a £27 Black Friday DNA kit exposed a Bristol woman's family secret no one expected

Most of us click “add to basket” during the Black Friday sales hoping for a bargain. A cheaper air fryer, maybe. A new toothbrush. But for two women on opposite sides of the planet, a discounted DNA test didn’t just save a few quid — it completely rewrote their lives.

Christina Buckler, from Bristol, had always carried a nagging feeling that she didn’t quite fit the puzzle she’d been born into.

Growing up, she’d joke about getting darker in the sun than everyone else, and her mum would occasionally mutter the line: “You’re not the milkman’s, you’re the sailor’s.”

It sounded like one of those family quips that gets passed around with the Sunday roast, so she shrugged it off.

Fast-forward a few decades to a Black Friday sale when she grabbed a £27 DNA kit from MyHeritage — more through curiosity than anything else.

But when the results landed, everything clicked into place. That throwaway family joke? Not a joke at all.

Her biological father wasn’t the man she grew up with… he was a Marine Commando named Ray.

Along with the surprise came a whole new family tree — seven half-siblings and ancestral threads that trace all the way back to William the Conqueror.

For Christina, the shock was matched only by the relief. For the first time, she finally understood why she’d always felt different. She belonged — just somewhere she didn’t know existed.

Meanwhile, literally on the other side of the world, another woman was about to have her own life-upending moment.

Alison Spence, raised in Cannonvale, Australia, had spent years searching for her birth mother.

Adopted as a baby, she’d grown up with questions, hope, and a slowly fading subscription to MyHeritage. With just days left before it expired, she got a new match: a first cousin. It was Christina.

“I was at my wits’ end and ready to give up,” Alison said. “When I got that match — and then her message — I was completely blown away.”

Their connection was instant. Messages turned into calls, calls turned into long emotional conversations, and then came another twist neither woman saw coming.

When Christina looked through Alison’s details, something caught her eye — the birth date, the adoption papers, the subtle clues.

She realised Alison was the daughter of her beloved Auntie Madeleine, who had given up a baby under heart-breaking circumstances more than half a century earlier.

When Christina broke the news to her aunt, now 80 and in fragile health, years of unanswered questions finally became joy.

Madeleine, who had carried that silent ache her whole life, was “over the moon.”

And when Alison finally met her biological mother, she was stunned by their resemblance — a face so familiar, but only now found.

“MyHeritage brought us together and helped us find a belonging we didn’t realise we were missing,” they said.

The deal Christina jumped on during the Black Friday sale is currently back on, and you can trace your own DNA pathways for just £27 - it's a 67% discount off the usual price.

Click here to find out more, and to grab the offer while it lasts.