Country artist Tanner Adell thought she had her adoption story figured out, but a surprise DNA match unraveled everything, ultimately leading to a very personal song.
Adell, who was adopted and raised in Manhattan Beach, California, opened up about her early life in a raw and tearful three-part post shared to Instagram on March 23.
In the posts, the singer details the twists, heartache, and journey to healing behind her discovery. Adell began her first post, sharing that she grew up with other adopted siblings, and on one Christmas, they each received Ancestry DNA kits.ย
While initially Adell’s DNA didn’t result in meaningful family connections, years later, she received an unexpected email from Ancestry. It notified her of a message from someone she refers to as “Joe” for the sake of anonymity.
Then came Joe’s message: โHey, my name is Joe, and I think youโre my sister.โ
By this point, outside of her Ancestry DNA testing, Adell had learned that her adopted parents suspected Adell had been the result of an affair her birth mother had outside of her marriage at the time.
“So it wasnโt like absolutely shocking to see a message like that. I just was like, Oh, yeah. Like, I remember hearing that I had like half-siblings out there,โ she explains in her second post.
When she and Joe got to speak for the first time they hit it off instantly. The two exchanged photos and compared physical traits, finding that they not only had the same shape of hands and ears but also shared a freckle on their legs. But as they kept talking, they realized their DNA confirmed they had a deeper tie than expected. They were full biological siblings.
Adell and Joe pieced together that in addition to having the same birth mother, they shared the same father: Adellโs biological father was Adellโs birth motherโs husband. The discovery unraveled years of assumptions and stunned them both.
“We just kind of sat there, and it’s really all a blur, but we realized that we were full siblings,” she explained. “Somehow, we assumed that my birth mother must have already been pregnant with me by her husband before she had an affair and mistakenly assumed that I must have been from this other man.”
“My first question was, ‘Does she know that you found me? Do you think she knows that we’re actually full siblings, that she didn’t need to give me away?'”
Adell sobs in the video as she describes how Joe then shared that her biological mother had died five years earlier.
“I just asked for pictures,” she tearfully recalled. “And he sent me this picture and my jaw dropped at how beautiful she was. I immediately said, ‘She looks like Dolly Parton.’… he said ‘She got that all the time.'”
In her search for a connection to a mother she never knew beyond the stories her brother could tell her, Adell dove into everything related to the famous country music icon, known well for her blonde image but even more so for her larger-than-life persona and vocal chords. Eventually, Adell came across the singer’s 1967 breakout song “Dumb Blonde.”
The song became a link for Adell, tying together her motherโs frequent comparisons to Dolly Parton with what had long been, for her, a mystery โ why her naturally brown hair would turn blonde in the sun.
โI started to realize how blonde hair felt like protection from my mom. It felt like sheโs there with me,โ she continued in her third post. โAnd that was when I was like, โOh, Iโm going blonde.โ I made my first-ever hair coloring appointment and I got my hair done.โ
Over time, lyrics for Adellโs latest song โGoing Blondeโ came to mind. The singerโs chorus weaves in the emotional core of Adellโs journey.
“Iโm goinโ blonde and Iโm never goinโ back/ Yeah, blonde like the mama that I never had/ She knew what she wanted, sheโd give you hell/ She was flirty and gorgeous, but toughะตr than nails.”
โI didnโt know if I would ever want anyone to hear it, but Iโm realizing that thereโs a lot of people that have lost someone and try to keep anything of them close… and thatโs really what this song is about,โ she shared.
Those words became a way for Adell to honor herself as well as the mother she never knew.
Last Friday, on April 28, four years after she learned about her birth mother, Adell’s โGoing Blondeโ was officially released.
โI think Iโm ready. I want people to know youโre not alone, and itโs okay โ itโs okay to grieve,โ she concluded her post.
