A woman who appeared on ITV’s Long Lost Family shared the heartbreak she recently endured following her sister’s death
Long Lost Family took an emotional turn as two adopted sisters met after spending decades apart.
The moving ITV show, presented by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell, returns to screens tonight with another tearjerking episode. In the show, Nicky meets Naomi, who is longing to find her biological twin sisters and mother.
Naomi has spent much of her life wondering about the family she never knew. Now living in Gloucestershire with her husband of 30 years, she is finally retracing the events surrounding her adoption and searching for answers about her birth family.
Adopted as a baby, Naomi grew up in a loving home with her adoptive parents in Plymouth. She always knew she had been adopted, but as she got older, questions about her biological family became increasingly difficult to ignore
When Naomi was a teenager, her parents showed her a letter they had kept since her adoption. What she discovered inside came as a major shock.
The letter revealed that Naomi’s birth mother had been just 19 when she gave birth. It also contained a revelation Naomi had never expected: her birth mother had given birth to twin girls, who had subsequently been adopted by other families.
Naomi recalled: “I was obviously very surprised when I found out that I had sisters. It was shocking.”
Both of Naomi’s adoptive parents died while she was in her 20s. In the years that followed, her desire to uncover more about her origins and find her birth family only grew stronger.
With Naomi’s birth mother now identified, the search turns to the two sisters she never knew she had. The team manages to uncover their names, Gail and Elaine, but the discovery brings both hope and heartbreak. They learn that Gail has sadly died, leaving Elaine as the only surviving twin.
Elaine tells presenter Nicky that she and Gail grew up together in a happy, loving home with their adoptive parents. Despite being separated from their birth mother as babies, the sisters shared a close childhood and had a positive upbringing.
But in the 1990s, Gail was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND). The illness gradually progressed over the following years, profoundly affecting her life before she sadly died in 2020.
Elaine also revealed that she recently lost her mum and her adoptive mother. Given her circumstances, she was elated to meet her sister.
Sobbing, Elaine said, “The fact that she’s gone to so much effort to find us, she must really want to meet us.”
When the sisters finally met, the pair couldn’t let each other go. Elaine said, “I’m so glad you found me. You’ve looked for so long, long, and I didn’t even know you existed.”
Naomi later said, “She was as warm and welcoming as her photo looked. Um, all I could have hoped for.”
Long Lost Family continues on Thursday 1st October at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.