00:00I was hugging a woman that gave birth to me. It felt like a hug I needed my whole life
00:04that I
00:04never got the chance to have. My parents couldn't have kids so they decided to adopt me and my
00:10brother. I grew up about 30 minutes away from New York City in the suburbs. I was always very close
00:16with my adoptive parents. I called them mom and dad. I always have been super grateful of the
00:21family of four that we have but part of me always wanted a little sister and I would you know
00:26jokingly beg my parents to adopt another baby girl for probably about five to seven years and it was
00:34like an ongoing joke in our family until I actually found out that I had a biological sister. I started
00:39posting on social media a few years ago. I was adopted from Colombia when I was two months old
00:44and it was international closed adoption. I wanted to talk about my story because I thought I had a
00:49unique family. I thought I had a unique story. One of the videos that I walked through start to finish
00:53you know my background. The fact that I had a half-sister. How I was adopted in 1999 just
00:59happened that that video popped up on my sister's algorithm she had on her side in Sweden because
01:04my sister was always interested in adoption in Colombia. She shared our birth father and mother's
01:09name which literally no one it was about besides like five people in my life. She also knew my full
01:14adoption name. When I saw her face landing eyes on me for the first time that like basically melted my
01:26emotions even more than they were already melting. The hug she gave me was like no other hug I've ever
01:30experienced. When you meet someone in person it's a completely different feeling.
01:39We were almost the same height. I was a little bit shorter than her. You know our eyes are almost
01:44identical. I touched her face she touched mine because it's almost like are you real? Is this real? It's
01:51crazy how much we look alike. Everything happens for a reason and I thought that I was brought on her
01:56page for a reason for her to find me. The universe did its work to just you know plan me
02:01on her for you page and
02:02then to bring our family together. In that same trip to Sweden we had a video call with our biological
02:08mother. After that I said to her I really want to go to Colombia. Let's make it possible to go
02:13to
02:14Colombia in you know a little under a year and you know let's save up let's commit to it. Rachel.
02:20Now we're twins.
02:21To fly from Sweden to Colombia it could be like a 24 hour long trip. So we wanted to you
02:27know break it
02:27up for her to see my apartment to meet all my friends my dog. So we stayed here for about
02:33two days
02:34and then we flew together from JFK to Colombia. We both were just like holding hands the entire flight
02:40and we're like we can't believe that this is happening. How did this happen? How are we actually
02:45doing this? There was just a lot of excitement happy anxiety for what's to come. Thank you.
02:49Colombia. I don't shake very easily but I was shaking. Me and Emily were both like holding
02:57each other arm in arm like shaking shaking shaking breathing in breathing out to calm down.
03:02Oh my god.
03:05Oh my god.
03:08Hi.
03:09Hi.
03:10Hi.
03:11Hi.
03:15Hi.
03:29Seeing her was so surreal. She's even shorter than I am. And when I hugged her for the first time,
03:35it just so amazing.
04:04I kept pushing my face in front of her saying, look at my face, like touch my face. And I
04:08felt, you know, her arms and her hands and her face. She felt like she was my biological mother.
04:22She said that these days that we spent with her were some of the best days of her life. And
04:28she's never felt as much love and happiness in any of her 60 years of life than she did in
04:33that day.
04:34We spent our time showing her photo albums. We gave her presents. My parents got her a t-shirt. We
04:40got her bracelets. I got her shoes when we were there. She truly deserved all of these things. She even
04:45gave us presents that she bought for us. And we just talked about life, you know, my family, Emily's family,
04:53where we're at now, what we do for work. And then we went out to eat.
05:01It felt like we were a part of their family. They accepted us for who we were, for everything that
05:07we've had to share. I felt so proud and accomplished, not only for me, but also seeing that I made
05:12Emily's dreams come true by bringing this all together.
05:15I told her I will be back with my mom, my dad, my brother, Emily in the coming years. Emily,
05:21she's going to plan to come back in October of 2027 for my wedding and she's going to be one
05:26of my bridesmaids. So that's really cool. I just want to have both of them in my life forever.
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