A British woman was left blown away after the search for her long lost siblings led her to a series of unexpected conclusions.
Tracking down your biological family when you're adopted can be a long and often harrowing task.
For Melanie Mackney, she had always known that her mother Maria had fled war-torn Yugoslavia in search of stability and soon found love with an Irish man after arriving in London in 1967.
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However, the couple would find themselves in less than fortunate circumstances and were eventually forced to give up Melanie and her older twin sisters, Kathleen and Rosemary, who were born a year earlier in 1969.
After being granted access to her records as an adult, Melanie set about trying to track down her mother and sisters but the search has been unsuccessful - until now.
Unable to find her siblings by herself, Melanie reached out to Davina McCall's ITV series Long Lost Family, where the team were finally able to make an astonishing breakthrough about her biological mother.
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During the show, Melanie discovered that prior to arriving in London, her mother had taken refuge in Australia, where she'd married and given birth to two daughters named Helen and Mitza.
However, Maria - who was suspected to have been suffering from schizophrenia - later walked out on the family and was never heard from again.
After reaching out to Helen and Mitza, Melanie was able to talk to her sisters via a series of video calls and see a picture of her mother for the first time ever.
The trio would also learn that Maria had died at just 43 years old after a difficult life.
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The trio's attention then turned to tracking down twins Kathleen and Rosemary, however, tragedy would soon strike.
Melanie would later discover that Kathleen had passed away in a car accident in 2021 aged just 52.
However the revelations didn't end there, with Melanie discovering that Kathleen had given birth to a son named Liam, who she was later able to meet in person.
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Like Maria, Kathleen had also struggled with mental health issues - which saw Liam taken into care at the age of seven, however, he managed to maintain a positive relationship with his mother.
As for Melanie, she had never had any children of her own as hearing about her mother's experiences with mental illness had always discouraged her.
"It’s quite obvious she was struggling and it put me off having children of my own in a way. I did want to have children, but I suppose in me, I thought 'will I be the kind of mother Maria was'," she explained during the episode.
After years of living with uncertainties about her origins, Melanie has since been working on getting to know her family further, later opting to celebrate her first ever Christmas with Rosemary, Helen, Mitza and Liam.
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Long Lost Family airs on ITV and ITVX.
Topics: UK News
Brenna Cooper