Two childhood friends in the Netherlands have discovered they are biological sisters, four decades after being adopted from an orphanage in India. Meena Geltink, 43, and Minal Tijssen, 44, who grew up about 100 miles apart, both experienced lingering feelings of loneliness and a desire to find answers about their birth families.
Their unexpected reunion came after a MyHeritage DNA test in April revealed they were a 100% sibling match. The women first met in 1996 at a gathering for adopted children, where they felt an immediate bond without realizing they were related. At the time, others remarked on their resemblance, and the pair jokingly referred to each other as "sis."
Following their initial friendship, they lost touch for 15 years. Tijssen, who now lives in France with her partner and two sons, was alerted to the DNA results on her phone in April. She initially didn't connect the results to her former teenage friend until she found Geltink on social media and saw recent photographs.
Despite feeling loved by their adoptive families, both women carried a sense of a missing piece in their lives. "For years, I felt a hole in my heart," Geltink, a mother of three, stated. "It’s like a missing puzzle piece has been found."
The two sisters were reunited in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, where they shared an emotional embrace, laughter, and tears. "We were friends before we were sisters," Tijssen remarked. "We were sisters the whole time, but we didn’t know."