Long-lost sisters reunited after 67 years through ancestry website: ‘Such a miracle’
SUMRALL, Miss. (WDAM/Gray News) - A Mississippi woman who was given up for adoption at birth recently discovered she has four sisters. It’s a journey down the road to sisterhood 67 years in the making.
Monette Marchman hit the sister jackpot. Having been given up for adoption at birth, she was finally learning more about her birth family. Little did she know, she had four sisters across the country who had been searching for her, too, for over a year, WDAM reports.
“We didn’t even know she [Marchman] existed until about a year and a half ago when our mom, going through her full dementia, comes out of the room and says, ‘You need to find your sister,’” Jana Paruginog said. “If we would’ve known we had a sister, we would have been looking for her our whole life.”
As it turned out, Marchman and all four of her sisters – Paruginog, Theresa Ponce, Lena Guzman and Tam Caballero – were on Ancestry.com, searching for information they never knew they’d find.
“My oldest daughter did an Ancestry, and she plugged my name in and got a hit on her email,” Marchman said. “The girl on the other end was one of my sisters’ daughters, and she said, ”‘I think my mom has been looking for her sister, and she said, ‘I’d like to meet you.‘“
The five sisters spoke to each other for the first time on Jan. 16.
“We spent two hours talking about anything that we could to help her know who we were, sharing pictures of all of us and our mother. It felt like we had known each other all these years,” Ponce said.
Not wasting a moment making up for lost time, the sisters traveled thousands of miles to Mississippi to meet Marchman.
“Getting to know her, it feels like we have known her all our life,” Guzman said. “To me, that is just so amazing, that there was a bond that could not be broken, even after so many years apart, and I love that.”
That feeling of love is shared among the sisters.
“It’s just been such a blessing, and I am just so excited for our future. It is just such a miracle,” Paruginog said.
The sisters have now met their new nieces and nephews, taken multiple road trips and formed memories that will last a lifetime.
“Sixty-seven years, that’s a long time to think you have no one else, and then, pop, they’re there,” Marchman said. “I love them so much. They are my whole family now. I think I’m going to have a wonderful life, a great life.”
The sisters are now planning a family cruise, with even more good times to follow.
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