'I love you very much,' Jimmy Lippert Thyden told his mother in Spanish as they embraced amid tears.
A 42-year-old Virginia man got to embrace his birth mother for the first time during a long-awaited family reunion in Valdivia, Chile.What seems like an unremarkable greeting between mother and son was in this case anything but.
"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 said in the interview from Ashburn, Virginia, where he works as a criminal defense attorney representing "people who look like me" who cannot afford a lawyer.
Other nonprofit organizations are doing similar work, including Hijos y Madres del Silencio in Chile and Connecting Roots in the United States. It turns out his cousin had a Maria Angelica Gonzalez on their mother's side and helped him make the connection."Then just the dam broke," said Thyden, who sent more photos of the American family who adopted him, his time in the U.S. Marines, his wedding, and many other memorable life moments.He traveled to Chile with his wife, Johannah, and their two daughters, Ebba Joy, 8, and Betty Grace, 5, to meet his newly discovered family.
Thyden said his adoptive parents are supportive of his journey to reunite with his lost relatives, but were "unwitting victims" of a far-reaching illegal adoption network and are wrestling with the realities of the situation.
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