A sales chief at two sister weeklies has been reunited with her biological brothers almost 60 years after she was put up for adoption.

Heather Wood, who works in Lydney as senior sales accounts manager for The Forester and The Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review, was reunited with her siblings thanks to a do-it-yourself DNA test purchased for her by her husband.

Mother-of-two Heather was born in Hereford, before she was put up for adoption at six months old.

She was raised in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, knowing she had been adopted, but a chance meeting with a friend’s landlady 39 years ago led to her meeting her biological family for the first time.

Heather Wood with her brother Stephen

Heather told her employer Tindle Newspapers: “I wasn’t bothered through childhood about finding anything out, I was quite happy.

“It wasn’t until I moved to Reading years later that I went to a friend’s house and her landlady thought I looked familiar.

“I told her I was born in Hereford and was adopted, and she asked if my original name was Jennifer, which it was. She then said ‘I know your mother’, which was just sheer chance.”

However, Heather’s contact with her siblings ended there out of respect for the wishes of her adopted mother.

She later learned on a trip to Hereford that her biological mother had passed away, but hope returned when her husband bought her the AncestryDNA test for her birthday four years ago.

Two weeks ago, she logged into the site for the first time in months to find a message from someone who thought they may be her first or second cousin.

Heather had since been able to reunite with her brothers Dean and Stephen.

She added: “Me and Dean were texting for a week before we arranged to meet – we were both a wreck leading up to that.

“It seems like it was meant to be, because all those years ago I lost contact, and if my cousin’s daughter hadn’t done a DNA test, I probably never would’ve met them again.

“It seems like fate – people don’t get this chance once in their lives, and I’ve had it twice.”