She spent "years and years trawling the internet" for information.

After 47 years of “waiting”, a woman is turning to strangers for help in the hopes of meeting her biological father. The woman, named Donna, explained that she would “nag and nag” her mum for information about her father while she was growing up. On the GoFundMe post, she explained that her mother couldn’t give her answers: “only his name”. She continued:

“Throughout my whole life I have felt that I never belonged anywhere, didn’t know my background and found myself wondering if I would ever get to meet this faceless man that I knew nothing about. “I have been researching for years how to find him and at times have felt like giving up feeling like it was an impossible task and that he had disappeared from planet earth. “Before my mother died a few years back I asked her again if she knew anything else at all that she could tell me and she mentioned his fathers name and that he was in the navy.”

Donna wrote that she had spent “years and years trawling the internet”, coming up with dead ends and almost-matches to his name. But things changed at the start of 2018, when she found an obituary in the name of her “grandfather”. She wrote:

“I then located through this a family tree which matched the only details I had of my fathers family and I managed to finally trace him after many emails to various family members and a lot of heartache! “I emailed my ‘father’ and told him why I was searching for him and he had never been made aware of me. “Over the months we spent some time emailing each other, this man at the other side of the world who could potentially have all of the answers I have been searching for my whole life. “We did a DNA test and after a long wait it was confirmed that he was in fact my biological father.”

Now, she is asking for assistance to fund a flight to go to New Zealand - where her father is living - to meet him face-to-face. She finished the post by writing:

“I am 47 years old and my father is 72. I live in the UK and he lives in New Zealand. “I know that there is no possible way I will ever be able to afford to travel there and get to meet him face to face and try and build a relationship with him so I am asking for peoples help in uniting me with the man that I have been waiting to meet for 47 years. “This may be the first and only time we will ever be able to meet in person and so it means a great deal to me to get to wrap my arms around him and feel my fathers warmth for the first time in my life.”

To date, she has received six donations, totalling £195, towards her £2,000 goal. You can donate to her campaign here.