Imagine finding out, at 15 years old, that you have more than a dozen siblings whom you've never met, all from a biological father whose face you've never seen.
That's what happened to Lexie Stewart, an Ottawa teen who recently learned she has 14 half-siblings all conceived through the same sperm donor. With the help of her mother, Stewart used the website Donorsiblingsregistry.com to connect with a few of those siblings, including Katee Kemether. Stewart and Kemether met in person for the first time this summer, in Kemether's home town of Pennington, N.J.
Both girls' parents helped facilitate the meeting, which they hope will be the first of many.
"I feel like we've known each other our whole lives," Stewart told CTV's Your Morning on Monday.
The two 15-year-olds are strikingly similar in appearance, with similarly-shaped faces and the same blonde colour hair.
"We share a lot of the same traits," Stewart said.
"I feel I can connect with her better than I can connect with anyone else," Kemether added, speaking from her home in New Jersey.
The girls also met with one of their half-brothers, a 16-year-old named Briley, over the summer.
Stewart says she and Briley share an affinity for music, which they believes comes from their biological father, who is a music teacher.
Stewart and Kemether say it would be "cool" to one day meet their biological father, if only to see what traits they share in common. However, neither one is concerned with hunting him down to pursue a relationship with him.
"If he chooses to be anonymous that's totally OK," Kemether said.
The girls have been in touch with two other half-siblings in Kansas, but they say they're waiting for their younger relations to get a little older before making contact with them.
The donor registry was developed in 2000 and is completely voluntary, and the girls' father remains anonymous. The half-siblings found each other by matching up with the number-and-letter code assigned to their donor father.
