Adopted Sisters Who Discovered Each Other Through TikTok Meet For First Time

An adopted woman shared a tearful first embrace with the biological sister she never knew existed—after a chance social media post revealed her long-lost sibling living 4,000 miles away in another country. For a quarter of a century, Rachel Weiner, who was adopted from Bogota, Colombia, to New York City, had no idea that she had a biological sister adopted to Sweden—until a social media algorithm turned her life upside down. Rachel, 26, was adopted when she was just two months old, and because she was older and adopted from a different orphanage than her sister, Emelie, 25, who moved to Stockholm, she had no way of knowing she even had a younger sibling. Emelie, meanwhile, was informed of nothing more than that she had an older sister who had the same parents, whose biological name was Karen, and who had been adopted to the United States. For years, Rachel would ask her adoptive parents for a sister, not knowing she had a sibling on the other side of the world. Then, in 2024, Rachel decided to start posting about her adoption story on social media to raise awareness for others in her situation. She was able to locate her biological mother and even shared a virtual call with her, and in July 2024, Rachel posted a video explaining the year of her adoption and the background to her situation. It wasn't until February 2025, though, that that video appeared on Emelie's For You Page on TikTok, which prompted the 25-year-old to think that the story closely resembled her own. Then, having looked closer at Rachel's appearance, Emelie couldn't get over how similar they looked—particularly their eye shape—and she commented on the video to ask if Rachel's biological mom was called Mariana. Rachel replied privately to Emelie to say that was her biological mother's name. And having then added Emelie on Instagram, the pair "thought each page was AI," given how similar they and their lives and appearances looked. Having matched photos they had each been given from around the time t