Man Taken at Birth Reunites With Mom After 42 Years Apart

It was an emotional reunion no one could’ve prepared themselves for.

Jimmy Lippert Thyden, a criminal defense attorney residing in Virginia, reunited with his biological mother María Angélica González more than four decades after he said she was told he died shortly after his birth at a hospital in Chile.

“It knocked the wind out of me, I was suffocated by the gravity of this moment,” Thyden told The Associated Press of the reunion in an interview published on Aug. 28. “How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of hugs?”

Thyden’s journey to find his relatives began earlier this year after he learned of Chilean-born adoptees who had been reunited with their birth families with the help of nonprofit Nos Buscamos.

According to Thyden, who summarized his case file to the outlet, the organization discovered that he was born prematurely at a hospital and placed in an incubator. Shortly after his birth, his mother was discharged from the hospital, but when she returned to get her baby, Thyden said she was told he passed away and that his body had been disposed of.