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Woman Searching for Her Birth Parents Discovers Her Dad Is One of Her Facebook Friends: 'A Huge Surprise'


Woman Searching for Her Birth Parents Discovers Her Dad Is One of Her Facebook Friends: 'A Huge Surprise'

"The moment he looked at me, he knew that I was his daughter," the woman said

An adopted woman from Georgia recently embarked on a mission to find her birth parents -- and she discovered in the process that she has been Facebook friends with her birth father the whole time.

Tamuna Museridze began to suspect she might be adopted in 2016, when the woman who raised her died, according to a Nov. 30 story from the BBC.

At the time, Tamuna, 40, reportedly found a birth certificate with her name on it -- but the date of birth differed from her own.

Tamuna -- who is a journalist -- then set up a Facebook page with the hope of finding more information on her roots.

She eventually received a message from a woman in rural Georgia, who shared that her aunt had concealed a pregnancy in September 1984, which was around the time of Tamuna's real birthdate.

The woman agreed to take a DNA test, which later revealed that she and Tamuna were first cousins, and that the woman's aunt was, in fact, Tamuna's birth mother.

Related: Baby Abandoned at Airport 33 Years Ago Finds His Birth Parents, Only to Learn His Mother Died

But, when Tamuna made a call to her birth mother, it told not go well. "She started screaming, shouting. She said she hadn't given birth to a child. She didn't want anything to do with me," Tamuna told the BBC, adding, "I was ready for anything, but her reaction was beyond anything I could imagine."

However, after about a week and a second phone call, Tamuna's birth mother supplied her with the name of her birth father -- a man named Gurgen Khorava.

"I couldn't believe these things were happening to me. I couldn't believe I had found them," Tamuna recalled.

Related: DNA Test Leads Man to Biological Parents He Thought Died 50 Years Ago: 'It Was Surreal'

When she went on Facebook to try to track Gurgen down, that's when Tamuna discovered that he had been following her story the entire time -- and was even a Facebook friend.

"[He had] been in my friend list for three years," Tamuna told the BBC. "He didn't even know my birth mother had been pregnant. It was a huge surprise for him."

The pair soon arranged to meet in Gurgren's hometown. "It was strange -- the moment he looked at me, he knew that I was his daughter. I had so many mixed emotions," Tamuna recalled.

Gurgen soon introduced her to his extended family, which included half-siblings and cousins, as well as aunts and uncles. "Out of all his children, I look the most like my father," Tamuna said.

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Tamuna eventually spoke more with her birth mother and discovered more about the circumstances of her own adoption.

She had learned that her mother -- fearful of the shame of having a child out of wedlock -- hid her pregnancy and eventually traveled to a nearby city to have the baby in secret.

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