Sometimes the story of how our life began isn’t always the one we thought we knew.
Adoption can often create a new narrative of how your life with your family began. But for one man, the story of his 42 years of life with his adoptive family suddenly became rewritten.
And for his birth mother, the son she thought was dead, was alive and well, thousands of miles from where he had been born and allegedly buried.
Jimmy Lippert Thyden was born in Chile and then adopted right after his birth.
Jimmy Thyden hugs Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his Chilean birth mother, as they meet for the first time in Valdivia, Chile. Photo by Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos via AP
“The paperwork I have for my adoption tells me I have no living relatives. And I learned in the last few months that I have a mama and I have four brothers and a sister,” Thyden told reporters from The Associated Press.
His path to finding out about his birth family came after he heard about the corruption and illegal adoptions that had happened during the ’70s and ’80s in Chile. According to Nos Buscamos, a Chilean nonprofit, upwards of 20,000 infants were adopted out illegally from mostly poor families.
Since its start in 2014, Nos Buscamos has helped more than 450 adoptees find their birth families, said Constanza del Rio, the founder and director of the nonprofit.
The real story was these kids were stolen from poor families, poor women that didn’t know. They didn’t know how to defend themselves,” del Rio said.
The nonprofit offers a free at-home DNA test for Chilean adoptees. Thyden’s test not only showed that he was 100 percent Chilean, it also found a cousin through the MyHeritage genealogy site. Suddenly Thyden’s family grew overnight – a mother and an entire set of siblings. Cousins and aunts and uncles that until now, he never knew existed.
Once he knew that information, Thyden got in touch with his cousin, and through that made his first attempt to talk to his birth mother, Maria Angelica Gonzalez.
Jimmy Thyden poses for a photo with his wife Johannah, and their two daughters, Ebba Joy, 8, left, and Betty Grace, 5, center, at the Valdivia Airport in Valdivia, Chile. Photo by Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos via AP
But it wasn’t easy – it took multiple phone calls for Gonzalez to believe that her son was alive. Thyden told the AP that his mother was told that her son, who had been born prematurely, had died. The hospital made her leave, telling her that he was already gone.
Thyden texted his mother pictures of his own wife and daughters. And that did the trick.
“Then just the dam broke,” said Thyden. He sent photos of his entire life, his time in the Marines, photos from his wedding.
I was trying to bookend 42 years of a life taken from her. Taken from us both,” he said.
In early August, Thyden, along with his wife Johanna and their two daughters, traveled to Valdivia, Chile, where his mother lives. The trip was a lifetime in the making, and the two quickly made up for lost time.
“Te amo mucho, (I love you very much),” he greeted his mother in Spanish, hugging her for the very first time.
“It’s a miracle from God,” Gonzalez told reporters. “When I learned that he was alive, I couldn’t believe it.”
Inside his mother’s house, Thyden found 42 balloons, one for each year he had been lost to his family.
Jimmy Thyden walks into his birth mother’s house in Chile. Photo by Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos via AP
“There is an empowerment in popping those balloons, empowerment in being there with your family to take inventory of all that was lost,” he said.
When his mother first heard from him, he said her response was everything. “Mijo (son) you have no idea the oceans I’ve cried for you,” she said. “How many nights I’ve laid awake praying that God let me live long enough to learn what happened to you.”
And now, thanks to this organization that spends its time trying to rectify the mistakes of the past, another mother gets a chance to know the son that she thought was gone forever.
Watch below for a look at this miraculous meeting!
Sources: People | The Virginian-Pilot
