Woman finds birth family in Australia with the help of a 25-year-old postcard from her grandma

Many individuals in the foster system or with adoptive families are curious about their biological roots, and Tiffany Sands from the UK was no exception. Her only clue about her birth family was an old postcard sent from the north coast of New South Wales, Australia, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Sands was sent to foster care at birth due to her parents' struggles with drug addiction.

Sands was placed in a specialized unit for babies exposed to drugs in the womb. "After two years in foster care, I was adopted, but I didn't find out about my birth parents until I was older," Sands told the outlet. She now lives with her family in Norwich, England. Hence, finding a family that lived at a far-off end in Australia was not an easy feat. Although the woman had reconnected with her birth mom in 2022, her dad had unfortunately passed away by that time. So the only means for Sands to find her dad's side of the family was a postcard that her dad's mom had written. The postcard from Tweed Heads was more than 25 years old and was with the woman's grandmom at her mom's side.

Sands made numerous attempts to reunite with her family in Australia but always came up empty-handed. At one point, she had given up, but her partner Scott Richardson secretly restarted the search during their vacation in Australia. "Tiffany was adopted at a young age and as time has gone by, she's talked more about tracing her roots. As soon as we booked the flights to Australia, I was keen to see what I could find out about her grandmother," Richardson stated. He signed up with several ancestry websites and kept looking for clues.

When Richardson couldn't find anything through ancestry websites, he joined the Tweed Heads Community group on Facebook. The response was incredible. "I was getting messages left, right and center with genuine offers of help. People knocked on the door of the address on the postcard trying to find Tiffany's grandmother, others searched online census records," he recounted. At one point, information came out that Sands's grandmom was not well but eventually someone found her aunt and gave her the information about her lost niece. "I messaged her saying: 'I know this is a bit of a surprise, but you may be my partner's aunt,'" Richardson shared.

Soon enough, the couple received news that the woman's grandmother was okay and living on the Gold Coast. "Meeting my nan was emotional and overwhelming. I assumed my nan was English, but it turns out she is an Australian," Sands revealed. "She met my grandad in Norwich [in 1972], got pregnant with my dad Steven and stayed for eight years." Her grandmom and dad moved back to Australia and stayed there till her father returned to England to stay with his dad. Her grandmom never saw him again after that. The woman is glad to have found her family and believes it was the highlight of her trip to Australia.