When she was 11-years-old, Jennifer Wilson made a discovery that would change her life forever: The kind woman next door whom she always knew as Aunt Eva was actually her mother, and she had given up Jennifer and her twin sister for adoption because she couldn't take care of them at her small home in Rotherham, England.
Luckily, a friend and neighbor of Eva's offered to adopt Wilson so that at least one of twins could have a relationship with her biological mother, The Star reports. But the other twin was adopted by another couple, and as soon as Wilson learned of her sister's existence, she began hoping she would some day be able to find her.
That dream came true for Wilson on March 12, 2010, when she finally met her twin sister, Kathleen Millns, after 56 years of searching and waiting, according to The Star. And for much of that time, her sister had lived no more than three miles away.
"One day we were at the hospital and [my husband] said he’d seen someone that was the spitting image of me. I asked him why he didn’t stop her. It could have been Kath," Wilson told the Daily Mirror. "Then a friend called me stuck up because she’d said hello to me in town and I’d ignored her. I said it hadn’t been me. And a bus conductor said he’d just seen me moments earlier. By the late 90s, I thought Kath must be around."
Wilson told the Mirror that for most of her adult life, she didn't intensively look for her sister because she didn't want to press her adoptive mother for information. But once her mother died, she decided to begin an active search and was happy to accept help from television researchers who wanted to document her journey for the show "Long Lost Family."
Through word of mouth and adoption registers, the producers tracked down Kathleen Millns and arranged for her to meet her sister that day in March. A year later, the twins told reporters that they are closer than ever.
"Last year we celebrated our joint birthday together, with our families. I couldn’t wish for more," Kath told the Star. "If Jenni and I had been children together we would have been double trouble. But we can still make mischief together.”