VICTORIA — When Felicia Harding looked at her phone that day, she never expected to see a stranger who looked just like her smiling from the screen.
“I was blown away,” Harding says of the picture showing a woman with the seemingly exact same features. “She really did look like me.”
She was Brittany Delaney, who was also surprised to find her doppelgänger on social media.
“If I wasn‘t looking at somebody else’s profile,” Delaney says. “I would have thought they were pictures of me.”
After connecting online, Delaney (who lives in B.C.) and Harding (who lives in Alberta) finally met in person.
“It was this out-of-body experience,” Harding smiles. “This is how people see me.”
They found the similarities ranged from the superficial (being able to unlock each other’s phones, having the same haircut, and liking the exact same beer) to the more substantial (they both picked partners who are musicians and both work as entrepreneurs). Delaney runs a bakery and Harding is a singer who teaches at her own recording studio.
“There are a million things that are the same,” Delaney laughs, before mentioning all the ways their mannerisms are similar.
After the women formed a fast friendship that’s endured for years, Delaney was invited to Harding’s wedding where — after family and friends kept mixing them up despite one of them wearing a wedding dress — the women decided to do a DNA test.
“I think we were both a little surprised in finding out we were not related at all,” Harding says.
Although they aren’t long-lost siblings, both women say they do feel like sisters. Even Delaney’s young son often can’t tell them apart.
“They have a crazy bond,” Delaney smiles. “He just loves her.
Loves her so much, that if you show the boy a picture of both women and ask who Harding is, he’ll smile and answer: “Other Mama!”
Which brings us to the women’s big difference — their fertility journeys. Harding hasn’t been able to have kids.
“Feeling like auntie, feeling like Other Mama, to me that’s really special,” Harding smiles.
But the greatest gift in finding your doppelgänger, they say, is seeing yourself from a whole new perspective.
“It felt a little bit healing for me,” Harding smiles. “Because sometimes there are things you don’t like about yourself. But then, watching and interacting with her, I was just like, ‘Oh! I think she is so lovely.’”
A sense of self-acceptance, that’s perhaps a reminder to all of us to be kinder to the reflection we see in the mirror.
