Adoption can be a beautiful thing, but it always begins with a loss. It’s a loss for the extended birth family and the child they will not get to raise. It is also a loss for the child who might not get to know a deep part of themselves. A pair of identical twins from Vietnam who were separated at birth understand this.
Ha Nguyen and Isabella Solimene did not properly meet until they were 13 years old. Now 24, they reflected on their journey to friendship, which did not happen overnight. They now consider themselves best friends.
The young women recounted their reunion to Today.com. Ha and Isabella met at an airport in Cam Ranh, Vietnam. Both traveled a long distance to get there and were exhausted. Ha was overcome with emotion but not for reasons you might expect. She was carsick from her journey.
“I cried because I was tired and nauseous from the van ride," Ha recalled.
It was not the picture-perfect reunion of a cheesy movie. “We hugged, but it was awkward,” Isabella said.
“We were strangers,” Ha explained. The twins had been raised 9,000 miles apart and did not share a common language.
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Examining the twins' origin story sheds a light on why this relationship did not blossom overnight. The girl’s mother, Lien, chose not to parent them because she did not have the financial means to do so. Lien took the girls to an orphanage, but they would only take Isabella. Ha was rejected because of health problems.
“The orphanage director thought I wouldn’t make it," Ha explained.
Ha was eventually adopted by her mother’s sister, Ro. Isabella was adopted at three years old by Keely and Mick Solimene, an affluent American couple with four biological children. Keely and Mick would also adopt Isabella’s best friend, Olivia.
Ha and Isabella had very different childhoods. Ha was raised in a modest one-bedroom home in a remote village as an only child. She got milk from the family’s cow that was tied up outside the house. Isabella lived a pretty privileged American life with lots of siblings.
As young girls, the twins knew about each other but had pretty good lives and were fully engrossed in them.
“I never wondered what Isabella was doing or what she looked like,” Ha admitted.
“I didn’t feel like there was anything missing from my life,” Isabella confessed. “I already had five siblings.”
Thankfully, adoptive mom Keely knew this would change as they aged. She tracked down Ha and orchestrated the reunion. She continued to work to have the girls build a relationship.
After their first meeting, the girls had weekly Skype dates. It was difficult to communicate because of the language barrier. “There would be a translator on the call and it’s hard to form a connection when you have to go through someone else,” Isabella recalled. When the girls began to talk on their own via texting with Google Translate, they found their connection.
“You can’t force a bond — even between identical twin sisters,” Isabella mused. “Our relationship had to progress naturally.” Isabella and Ha are now best friends and both live with Keely and Mick. Ha finished high school in the United States. Both girls graduated from Lake Forest College, with Isabella studying public relations and Ha studying sociology and anthropology.
The twins are closer than ever. “We have a strong emotional understanding of each other that I don’t have with my other brothers and sisters. It’s just this feeling of sameness. She’ll understand what I’m feeling without me having to say a word,” Isabella gushed.
