Karen Harris of Cornwall, England, knew who her birth father was. A social worker told her about him 30 years ago.
But the two had never met.
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The Falmouth Packet reported Harris' parents placed her for adoption in the 1960s after the teenagers learned they were expecting. The 56-year-old managed to track down her birth mother 10 years after meeting with a social worker when she was 18.
But it wasn’t as easy to find her father, Trevor Sinden. Harris knew he was an electrician from the south London town of Croydon, but she found him only after Facebook suggested she add him as a friend.
"I had to step back for the whole day, working out am I prepared to face that again, (maybe) face rejection," Harris told the BBC of her Nov. 26 discovery. "Maybe he does not want to know me."
Yet Sinden, who thought of his child over the years but wasn’t sure if he had a boy or girl, wanted to know his daughter. He almost instantly responded to her message and recognized himself in a photo she sent him. He said she shared similar features with his three other daughters.
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After spending a few weeks talking online, the pair met last Friday, the Falmouth Packet reported. They hugged for so long that a stranger walked by and said, "I hope you know each other."
"Actually, no we don't!" Karen replied.
Over the next several days, the daughter and father went on walks and searched for fossils along the Jurassic Coast in Lyme Regis, England.
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"It's like all of her Christmasses at the same time. It's so surreal, the chances of actually meeting were so slim,” Sinden said. "I have looked on the internet but could never find her. It's early days but I feel we already know each other quite well. If it wasn't for Facebook we wouldn't have met."
Sinden has since shared several photos of him and his daughter on Facebook.
"You just don't feel as though you belong. Looking at your family that brought you up, you're really grateful that they brought you up but you don't have that sense of belonging,” Harris told the newspaper. "Now I've found completion. I've found connection and completion and I'm cherishing it."
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