After 42 years, Jimmy Lippert Thyden from America finally met and hugged Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his mother from Chile, for the first time.
The man, who was adopted as a newborn, later learned that he had been taken from the hospital, where his biological mother had been informed that her child had died at birth.
Their touching, against-the-odds reunion began in April 2023 after Thyden, a lawyer, read of a man from California who had been illegally adopted in Chile, according to USA Today.
Thyden wondered if he should check the specifics of his adoption. He set off on a mission to discover his true identity, propelled by an enigmatic pull.
Thyden had been deceitfully torn from his original mother, but his adoptive parents in Arlington,
Virginia, were ignorant of this. Thyden was raised as one of three children in a loving, two-parent home.
He went on to serve in the U.S. Marines for 19 years while being aware of his Chilean birth, and he later established himself as a committed criminal defense lawyer.
But neither he nor his adoptive family, who lived under the repressive regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990, knew that any of his living relatives were still in the South American country.
After contacting Nos Buscamos, a nonprofit organization in Chile that aids in the reunion of adoptees with their birth parents,
Thyden discovered the reality after only a few weeks of looking. Over 650 children who were abducted from their Chilean moms have been painstakingly reunited with them since 2014,
only to be adopted into families all over the world, from the United States and Canada to Europe
and beyond. A ray of hope appeared amidst this sorrow when MyHeritage provided 20,000 DNA test kits.
Thyden stated on Facebook, ‘For 42 years, I lived on this planet with documents from the Chilean government stating I had no living relatives.
I was unaware that my Mamá had been defrauded of my existence 42 years prior. Victim of a well-planned and deeply ingrained falsehood.
‘I LIVE. Mama IS ALIVE. I have a sister and brothers,’ he continued. ‘These are the truth, and we will
continue to tell these stories until ALL the Children are found or ALL the families are reunited!!’
On August 17, 2023, he wept when he saw Gonzalez again in Valdivia, Chile. Thyden greeted his birth mother for the first time, saying,
‘Hola, Mama!’ with shaking hands and a heart full of emotions. Those two words carried the weight of a lifetime,
the grief of numerous missed opportunities, and the happiness of a long-awaited reunion.
Gonzalez didn’t mention the presence of the baby she thought had died during those years, keeping the terrible secret from her four kids and daughter.
She believed her kid was lost forever for years, but as the mother and son clung to each other while crying, it became clear that their hearts had never truly been apart.
Thyden is currently campaigning for the Chilean government to recognize the egregious injustices by assisting in the reunification of separated
families, including by paying for travel costs. He calls for the provision of counseling services as well as the prosecution of newborn traffickers.
Thyden plans to strengthen his relationship with his Chilean family in the interim and lay the groundwork for their shared life experiences.
They began singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him in Spanish as soon as they got to know his relatives.
The combined energy of their lost years mingled with their newfound hope as he burst 42 balloons, each one signifying a year they were separated.
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