A Florida woman on a journey of self-discovery has uncovered her true heritage almost 24 years after being adopted. Sydney Parkhurst, who was adopted as a child, said she tracked down her biological parents and discovered she is half Black.
Her mother, Inga Coleman, had placed her up for adoption due to her inability to raise her at the time, according to Daily Mail. The 24-year-old from Florida had always known her birth parents were unable to raise her. Despite knowing this, she had no other information about her birth parents.
That changed in 2020 when her half-sister, Kayla Hensley, reached out with the tragic news that their mother had passed away in 2018. Determined to learn more about her biological parents, Parkhurst submitted a DNA test to Ancestry.com, beginning her journey of discovery. Her search for her birth parents led to a surreal reunion with her father more than two decades later.
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Her journey began in 2018 when she submitted a DNA sample to 23andMe, followed by another test to Ancestry.com. This resulted in a message from her first cousin, ChanDreas Barkley, who connected her with her father, Lenton Mitchell, a 53-year-old paving worker.
Her long-awaited reunion with her father, Lenton Mitchell, occurred on June 23, 2024, in Cartersville, Georgia. Mitchell, who expressed his wish that he had met her sooner, described the meeting as “surreal.”
Parkhurst, who had no prior information about her father, discovered she was biracial only after starting her search for her birth family.
“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.”
