Two California Women Meet their Mothers
ONE
“A woman has found her birth family and detailed the heartwarming journey of meeting her family and being reunited with her mom in a Twitter thread that has since gone viral.
Albreanna Watson, 28, of Los Angeles, California, was adopted at birth and never knew her family or where she came from. All she knew was that her mom was Thai and her dad was black.
In 2008, when Albreanna was 17, her adopted mother died and since her passing, she has been on her own, according to her GoFundMe page.
Not having a single family member to rely on, Albreanna set out to find her biological family and took her efforts to ancestry.com, where she was able to connect with her three biological siblings and mother.
She said in a tweet: ‘I found my biological family. I’m a daughter. I’m a sister. I’m an aunt. I’m a granddaughter. B***h I’m a relative!!! A thread.’
Her journey started when she received a message from a man who found her on Ancestry.com, asking her some questions about herself.
She wrote on Twitter: ‘So I get a message from this guy off of Ancestry. He asked me questions like is your name Albreanna? Were you born in SC and is your birthday in August? I’m like yeah…’
She continued: ‘He’s like, “Well I’m your brother and I been looking for you for years.”
‘My heart instantly drops and I’m like don’t play! He’s like yeah and you’re the third youngest of four. I’m shook.’
Her biological brother proceeded to get her on group FaceTime with all her siblings who all have the same mom but different dads.
Afterward, she met her youngest brother (the one that messaged her) face-to-face because they discovered they live only 30 minutes from each other in Los Angeles.
But the real reunion came when she met her mother after deciding to surprise her along with two of her other siblings.
Naturally, Albreanna felt anxious about meeting the woman who gave her up for adoption and in a video posted to her Twitter page, she shared how nervous she felt about meeting her birth mother for the first time.
She said: ‘I feel anxious. I have a little bit of baby anxiety. There’s just so much going on right now and I just don’t know how she’s going to reciprocate to me. I’m everything right now – I’m so nervous.’
‘What if she doesn’t accept me? What if she does? What if she gets mad that they brought me? What if she breaks down? I have so many emotions running through me.’
Luckily, she didn’t have to worry about connecting with her siblings because she shared in a post that she instantly bonded with them and was able to tell immediately that they ‘was my blood’.
Albreanna and her siblings (minus the youngest) arrived at the airport to greet their mother, with Albreanna meeting her for the first time.
‘Do you think she’ll recognize me,’ she asked her brother right before she met her birth mother who was overcome with emotions at the sight of seeing her daughter.
But after the tears, the newly reunited duo filmed a sweet video together, which Albreanna captioned: ‘She is loud, crazy and wild just like me!’
She even shared a photo of her birth mother from the 90s with the caption: ‘This was moms in the 90s….everything makes sense.’
The day after Albreanna’s birth mother gave her up for adoption, she got her name tattooed on her ankle so that she would remember the child she gave up.
‘My mom got my name tatted on her ankle the next day after she gave me up,’ Albreanna said in a tweet. ‘She told me she was never going to forget about me. And she didn’t.’
She added: ‘I am complete. I’m a child who found people who look like me. Act like me. It’s crazy that my mom and I share the same mannerism but never grew up around her.’
‘Thank you @Ancestry for connecting me with my long lost family. My journey is complete and life has new beginnings.’
Albreanna shared the process in a series of tweets and short clips shared via Twitter thread and since it was posted on July 7, it has gotten more than 95,000 retweets, 339,000 likes and more than 2,000 comments from people congratulating Albreanna on finding her birth family.
The support and encouragement has even inspired Albreanna to start a GoFundMe page and #Albreannafindme so people can share their family reunion stories and feel support and encouragement during a difficult and confusing time.
‘I realized that many of the people who read my story do not have the same support as me and I feel as though it is my calling to help others who are going through this alone,’ she wrote. ‘My goal is to unite people with their families as well as provide encouragement and a strong support system.’ ”
[Daily Mail 7/10/18 by Chloe Castleberry]
TWO
“The heartwarming and tearful embrace of a woman and her birth mother, meeting for the first time, was caught on camera in California.
Heather Odell, 31, first started searching for her biological parents at the age of eight, according to Jukin Media, which published the video on Sunday showing her success in finding her mom.
It was a photo she had found of herself as a baby at a foster home that started the long journey that ended in so many happy tears in the city of Redding.
‘Oh, my God, let me look at you, you’re beautiful!’ her mother, Renee Hamilton, tells her after just a moment of letting it all sink in.
The story of their reunion, as Odell tells it, includes a whirlwind of her own personal detective work, a lackluster meeting at age 18 with her biological father, finding Hamilton on Facebook only to learn her mother was in prison, a lost job and an impromptu roadtrip that eventually provided the opportunity for them to meet.
When it was all said and done, Hamilton let Odell go just long enough for a semi-twirl and then wraps the young woman up again in her arms, in a mother’s loving embrace.
Video playing bottom right…
Odell said she was adopted at 18 months old, and didn’t know it until she found the baby picture of herself, at the age of eight.
‘The picture had a different last name than what mine was [so] I questioned my mom and then she told me,’ Odell said.
‘It was an open adoption so I took it upon myself to do all the research and try to find my biological parents.’
Odell said she found her biological father first, and met him when she was 18 years old.
After having searched since the age of eight when she found a baby photo of herself at a foster home, Heather Odell (pictured) finally met her biological mother, Renee Hamilton, in the city of Redding, California
Odell is seen here posing in a mint outfit in a photo shared to social media on October 30
‘We didn’t really have much of a bond after,’ she said. Then, through Facebook she was able to track down her biological mother, Hamilton.
‘But she was not responding to my messages or anything like that, so I wrote her friends off of her page, [and] come to find out she was in prison for robbing a liquor store around the corner from her house with her boyfriend, [who] is the same age as [me],’ Odell said.
‘Renee was also adopted and had a really rough life, [involving] lots of drug and alcohol abuse. I finally reached out and found which prison she was at. I wrote her with my first letter. She wrote back with such surprise! We then continued to write back and forth.’
She added: ‘When Renee finally got out of prison she wanted to meet me. I had no intentions of meeting her but one day I lost my job at work and I thought to myself, “What the hell, I want to meet my biological mom,” so I made a trip out of it, drove up to Redding and met her!’
The clip of the culmination of this long journey starts with Odell walking up a few steps and along a cement sidewalk.
It’s clear she’s nervous, as she fidgets by adjusting her grey tank top over her denim shorts, while she makes her way closer to the front door of the home where her biological mother is waiting inside.
Just before she steps up to the door, she flicks her wrists in an apparent effort to shake out even more nerves before coming face-to-face with the woman who gave her life.
The clip starts with Odell walking up a few steps and along a cement sidewalk, visible only from the back, fidgeting and flicking her wrists nervously
As she approaches the entry way, her dark flip-flops come to rest on a mat that reads, ‘Welcome,’ accented by a colorful zigzag pattern.
The camera then pans up to show her raising her arm, poised to knock and announce her arrival.
But Odell doesn’t tap the door, just yet. First, she adjusts her hair one last time, separating it in the middle and bringing even amounts forward, over her shoulders.
As Odell approaches the entry way, her dark flip-flops come to rest on a mat that reads, ‘Welcome,’ accented by a colorful zigzag pattern, as she pauses before knocking
Odell adjusts her hair one last time, separating it in the middle and bringing even amounts forward, over her shoulders, before getting ready to knock on the door
Then, Odell wipes her hands on the back of her shorts, raises her arm, and this time raps her fist on the door a few times, before stepping back and fidgeting even more
As she waits for someone to answer, she turns to camera and we see her face for the first time, with a huge grin stretching from ear-to-ear.
The first face seen at the door is a man in a blue shirt, and then a woman who will soon be revealed to be the mother can be seen to the left, as a small dog rushes outside and barks to greet the newcomer.
Then a young boy wearing a red tee shirt and a diaper walks up, waving his hand and saying ‘Hi’ to the long-haired brunette in the doorway
Odell comes inside and her mother, Hamilton, can then be heard repeating, ‘Oh, my God,’ a few times before wrapping her daughter up in her arms
Odell hunches over a bit, overcome by emotion, and a soft voice says, ‘C’mon in,’ from somewhere in the distance.
Before she can step foot indoors, a young boy also steps up, wearing a red t-shirt and a diaper, waving his hand and saying ‘Hi’ to the long-haired brunette in the doorway.
The man scoops the child up in his arms, Odell steps inside, and Hamilton can then be heard repeating, ‘Oh, my God,’ a few times before wrapping her daughter up in her arms.
In between sobs and deep breaths, Hamilton says, ‘Oh, my God, it’s my daughter,’ with pure joy
‘I love you,’ Hamilton says, followed by, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ as she grips tightly on to Odell
Odell also said that one of the people she reached out to in order to get in contact with her birth mom turned out to be the father of her biological brother, Cody Lowry.
Odell wrote in a post on Facebook that she was aware of Cody, and had found her mother in ‘2012 or 2013,’ several years before she was able to actually meet her. ”
[Daily Mail 7/9/18 by Stephanie Haney]
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