Meena Geltink was only a few years old when she arrived in the Netherlands, adopted from India. Shortly afterward, she met Minal Tijssen at a weekend gathering organized for adopted children, and it only took a little while for them to become inseparable friends.
Life separated them. They went 15 years without speaking, each building her own life less than 160 kilometers apart without knowing it. Until one day Minal, 44, wrote to Meena, 43, on Facebook: “Do you remember me?” Alongside the message was a screenshot from MyHeritage, the genealogy site where Meena had been waiting since 2017 for an answer about her biological family.
When she reinstalled the app, the answer she had been seeking for years appeared: Minal and she had the same parents. The childhood friend with whom she shared laughter at that camp had, all along, been her biological sister. Today, they both remain connected to the families who raised them, but they found something they hadn’t known was missing.