After nearly 24 years of adoption, a woman in Florida has discovered her true heritage through a voyage of self-discovery. Sydney Parkhurst, who was adopted as a child, stated that she tracked down her biological parents and learned she is half Black.
According to the Daily Mail, her mother, Inga Coleman, surrendered her for adoption owing to her incapacity to nurture her.The 24-year-old from Florida knew her birth parents couldn’t raise her. Despite knowing this, she had no further knowledge regarding her birth parents.
That changed in 2020, when Kayla Hensley, her half-sister, informed her with the devastating news that their mother had died in 2018. Parkhurst submitted a DNA test to Ancestry.com, beginning her path of discovery. Her search for her birth parents resulted in a bizarre reunion with her father over 20 years later.
Her odyssey began in 2018 when she sent a DNA sample to 23andMe, followed by another test at Ancestry.com. This resulted in a communication from her first cousin, ChanDreas Barkley, who introduced her to her father, Lenton Mitchell, a 53-year-old pavement worker.
Her long-awaited reunion with her father, Lenton Mitchell, took place on June 23, 2024, in Cartersville, Georgia.Mitchell, who wished he had met her sooner, described the encounter as “surreal.”
Parkhurst discovered her biracial identity after searching for her birth family, as she had no prior knowledge of her father.
“I am not sure on the details why – all I know is that my birth mom couldn’t keep me and she didn’t give the hospital a lot of details about who my father was.
“I grew up in Rhode Island, and I didn’t look like anyone else in that community.”
“I struggled a lot with fitting in at school and I didn’t know I was half black until I took a DNA test in my senior year.”
She was born on March 10, 2000, in Rome, Georgia, and was put up for adoption at birth. One month later, she was adopted by Kimberly and David Parkhurst, who then moved from Atlanta, Georgia, to Barrington, Rhode Island, where Parkhurst grew up.
Parkhurst said: “Rhode Island doesn’t have a lot of diversity and my parents are both white – growing up I felt like an outsider.
“I struggled fitting in but I was good at sports and that is what I used to fit in.
“It was still super hard for me as I had nobody who looked like me.”
Parkhurst said she enjoyed a happy childhood with her adoptive parents but felt nervous about expressing her desire to find her biological parents.
“I didn’t want to look ungrateful for everything they have done for me,” she shared.
Driven by a persistent curiosity, she often searched online for information about her birth parents. In 2018, during her senior year of high school, she took a DNA test and submitted the results to 23andMe.
“My half-sister reached out to me in April 2020 and said we might be half-siblings,” she said. “I met my half-sister on my mum’s side in January 2021 who told me my mum had passed away two years earlier.
“I then knew it would be a stretch to find my birth father as my mom left no information about him.”
Parkhurst took another DNA test and posted the results on Ancestry.com, where she was eventually contacted by her first cousin on her father’s side.
She said: “I thought I needed to find my dad in case he had passed away. I found my first cousin and she was able to piece together which one of her uncles was my dad. She asked her uncles if they knew the name of my birth mother and he said yes.”
Parkhurst received a text message from her father, Mitchell, expressing his wish that they had met sooner.
He said: “I am glad you reached out trying to find me, if I had known about you we would have met sooner.
“I love you and I’m glad to have a new daughter that I did not know about, if you have any questions you can call me.”