A birth mother recently reunited for the first time with the daughter she put up for adoption 62 years ago — an emotional meeting that came after the child’s decades-long search for her mom.
It was in 1954 when Goldie Waltman found herself unemployed, single and pregnant, a difficult situation that led her to put her daughter, Patricia Lorenz, up for adoption. Little did she know that, decades later, the two would be reunited.
“I gave her up,” Waltman told WPMG-TV. “And it was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.”
The entire scenario likely came as a big surprise for Waltman’s other five children, as it wasn’t until five years ago at a doctor’s appointment that the now-85 year old made the revelation after a doctor asked how many kids she has.
When she responded “six,” one of her daughters stepped in to correct her and say “five.” That’s when the family learned about Lorenz for the first time.
Kellie Taylor, one of Waltman’s daughters, said she and her siblings immediately began to search for Lorenz, though that quest was relatively fruitless for the first five years — until Ancestry.com helped reconnect the family members this past August.
“We started to search for her, but unfortunately we were using the wrong name, wrong state, and we just didn’t get anywhere,” Taylor told WPMG-TV.
But after finding Lorenz and exchanging messages online, the long-lost daughter, who now lives in Alabama, subsequently flew up to Pennsylvania in August to meet the family.
Lorenz told media that she, too, spent quite a bit of time — 47 years, to be exact — looking for her birth mother, and that she was elated over their reunion. As for Waltman, she, too, expressed gratitude.
“I finally got to see her,” Waltman said of the experience, noting that she prayed for her child each and every day over the decades. “The Lord’s been good. I didn’t think this would ever happen.”
While the story was first told in local media back in August, it is just now making broader rounds on Christian news sites.
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