I just received my 23andMe results.

[Fridays Child]

Several years ago, my kids got me a mitochondrial DNA test for Christmas. Since then, I've traced the women of the family as far back as 1609. I even met someone who shares a relative from more than ten generations ago.

This year, the 23andMe analysis was my Christmas present to myself.

The health risk details are enlightening. I won't make any immediate decisions based on what I've learned but the information is certainly useful. Knowledge is power, as the saying goes, and these results are a good starting point.

The ancestry composition results are interesting, too. Assuming that my siblings and I have the same parents, it's fairly certain that we're all of mostly Northern European origin. I'd already done some genealogy research, so the percentages--Irish and British, French and German, Scandinavian, etc.--didn't come as a complete surprise. But it was news to me that a small part of the total composition is Eastern European. I've always had a feeling that some of our ancestors were Ukrainian, and this bit of data points in that general direction.