Adopted woman meets her parents after 25 years - and discovers she is half black

A woman adopted as a baby tracked down her long lost parents after 25 years - and discovered she is half black.

Sydney Parkhurst, 24, was put up for adoption as a baby as her biological mum, Inga Coleman, was unable to keep and raise her.

Curious Sydney grew up understanding she was adopted but initially didn't know her biological parent's names, ages or location.

She started looking for her birth parents in 2018 when she took a DNA test and submitted a sample to 23andMe.

Two years later in April 2020, her half-sister on her mum's side, Kayla Hensley, 32, reached out and told her that her mum had sadly passed away in 2018.

In November 2021, after finding out her mum had died she knew she needed to find her dad and submitted another DNA test to Ancestry.com.

She then got a message from her first cousin on her dad's side, ChanDreas Barkley, 31, who put her in contact with her father, Lenton Mitchell, 53, who works in paving.

Her dad sent her a text to say he wished he met her sooner and the pair saw each other for the first time on June 23, 2024, in Cartersville, Georgia and said it was "surreal".

It wasn't until her search for her birth family that Sydney discovered she was biracial - as there was no information about her birth father.

Sydney, a multimedia designer, from Tampa, Florida, US, said: "I always knew that I was adopted.

"I am not sure on the details why - all I know is that my birth mum couldn't keep me and she didn't give the hospital a lot of details about who my father was.

"I grew up in Rhode Island, and I didn't look like anyone else in that community.

"I struggled a lot with fitting in at school and I didn't know I was half black until I took a DNA test in my senior year."

Sydney was born on March 10, 2000, in Rome, Georgia, and was put up for adoption at birth.

One month later, she was taken in by Kimberly Parkhurst, 64, and her husband, David, 61.

Her adoptive parents then moved 1,000 miles away from Atlanta, Georgia, to Barrington, Rhode Island, New England, where Sydney grew up.

Sydney said: "Rhode Island doesn't have a lot of diversity and my parents are both white - growing up I felt like an outsider.

"I struggled fitting in but I was good at sports and that is what I used to fit in.

"It was still super hard for me as I had nobody who looked like me."

Sydney said she had a great childhood and she was "blessed" with her adoptive parents but she was nervous telling them she wanted to find her birth mum and dad.

She said: "I didn't want to look ungrateful for everything they have done for me.

"I would search on random websites and try to find whatever I could.

"I always had that question and I always wanted to know who my birth parents were."

In 2018, during her high school senior year, Sydney took a DNA test and submitted the results to the website 23andMe.

She said: "My half-sister reached out to me in April 2020 and said we might be half-siblings.

"I met my half-sister on my mum's side in January 2