When Sandra Hicks found out she was pregnant at 17 back in 1970, she knew the difficult decision to give her daughter up for adoption had to be made. She gave birth to a baby girl in a maternity home and was able to hold her for just thirty minutes.
Hicks was later married and after over 50 years of life and marriage, the little girl never left her heart. “This time of year…around Thanksgiving time…I would go through this sadness. I can’t explain it, but my heart would be so sad.” she said in an interview with Arizona’s ABC 15, where she lives. Due to the closed adoption, Sandra didn’t know where her daughter went on to live. It wasn’t until she received a notification on Ancestry.com earlier this year from a young lady in Gaithersburg, Maryland that she heard anything about the little girl she had to give up.
Gaithersburg native Azhia-Lin Thompson recently received an Ancestry testing kit as a present from her boyfriend. She was looking to find out more about her ethnicity, but noticed that the test revealed a “close relative” named Sandra Hicks. She immediately recognized the last name and reached out to find out that this was her grandmother. After finding out, Azhia was crying tears of joy. Her mother, Heidi Lynn Wallace, came into the house to find Azhia crying and was told that her birth mother had been found.
Heidi connected with her mother- first on FaceTime and then this holiday season, the family flew out to meet their mother and grandmother. 53 years later, mother and daughter were reunited. “We weren’t even in Arizona for 24 hours and ended up on the news LOL. My mom has officially met her birth mother. I cannot believe this. Never in a million years did I imagine this would ever happen. Thank you, Jesus!” Azhia wrote in an instagram caption showing the Arizona news broadcast of the reunion.
According to the ABC 15 interview, the family has already bonded over their love for music. They’re planning their own rendition of the song “This Christmas” for next year. “I don’t have a new chapter, I have a whole new book now” Heidi said. “This is the ultimate Christmas gift.”
Head over to Instagram to see Azhia tell her story, which also includes finding her father’s side of the family (he was also adopted). First video can be seen below:
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