An emotional Long Lost Family search sees two sisters “overwhelmed with happiness” after meeting for the first time. Naomi, who grew up an only child and knew from a young age that she was adopted, discovered from her adoption paperwork that she had two older sisters – before Naomi, her birth mother had twins. So Naomi appears on the ITV programme wanting to find them all.
Naomi's search for her birth family
The 58-year-old lives in Gloucestershire with her husband of thirty years. She was adopted as a baby and had a happy childhood growing up with her adoptive parents in Plymouth. Naomi always knew she was adopted but wondered from a young age about her birth family. As a teenager her parents gave Naomi a letter they had kept from the time of her adoption, which held some surprising information about her birth family.
She explains: “It told them about my mum being 19 when she'd had me….. And it described that she'd had twin girls and that they'd been adopted elsewhere. And these babies were placed for adoption by a society in Cheshire. I was obviously very surprised when I found out that I had sisters. It was shocking.”
Returning to Plymouth and finding answers
Naomi’s adoptive parents both died when Naomi was in her twenties and over the years her need to find birth family only grew. Naomi returns to Plymouth to visit the mother and baby home where she was last with her birth mother. She says: “I spent my first 6 weeks here and my birth mother looked after me all that time. The attachment must have been there. And the idea of one minute the baby's there and the next they're gone, you just can't imagine”.
Naomi feels now is the right time to find her birth mother and has burning questions about her twin sisters: “Were they kept together? Were they adopted together? Did they know they were adopted? And were they happy?”. She adds: “The older you get, the more retrospective you get, and the more you need answers.”
Discovering sister Elaine
The Long Lost Family intermediaries discover that Naomi’s birth mother is still alive and reach out to her. She tells our team that she doesn’t feel ready to meet Naomi just yet but that she is interested in having contact, with time. After finding Naomi’s birth mother the team then refocused the search on her twin sisters and discovered their names are Gail and Elaine.
Sadly, they find that Gail has died but they make contact with Elaine, and Nicky goes to meet her at her home in Manchester. Elaine, 63, explains to co-host Nicky that she and Gail had a wonderful childhood with loving adoptive parents. Elaine explains that Gail was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease back in the 90s and the disease progressed until she died in 2020.
Elaine tells Nicky that she has also lost her adoptive mum and her husband in the last ten years and after suffering so much loss, meeting Naomi has come at a good time. She can’t wait to meet her. Elaine says: “The fact that she's gone to so much effort to find us, she must really want to meet us”.
First meeting and plans for the future
Co-host Davina McCall travels to Naomi’s home to give her the difficult news about her birth mother and the good news that her sister Elaine would love to meet her. Naomi is told away from the cameras about the death of her sister Gail. Naomi feels disheartened when she hears that her birth mother wishes to take things slowly. She admits she feels “rejected” but Davina says: “This is her reaching out to you in as best way she can at the moment.”
Naomi is delighted to receive a photo and a letter from Elaine. She says: “It's very warm, very welcoming. Very welcoming. She looks happy. She does look lovely”. When the pair meet each other for the first time they embrace and can’t let go.
Elaine says: “I'm so glad you found me. You've looked for so long long and I didn't even know you existed.” The pair then exchange photos and share stories about their upbringing, with Naomi saying she has known about her two sisters since she was a teenager but has only now found her decades on.
Naomi says: “I am overwhelmed with happiness. She was as warm and welcoming as her photo looked. It is all I could have hoped for and the shared connection I was looking for definitely.”
Elaine adds: “I was blown away how much we looked alike, and that I've now got a baby sister. So happy! I feel fantastic.” The programme ends saying the sisters are now in regular contact and plan for their families to meet up soon.
Long Lost Family is on Thursday night on ITV at 9pm.
