52-Year-Old Prayer Answered, At Last: Mom Reunites With Her Daughter She Gave Up for Adoption
For 52 years, Donna Pavey had been praying for the day when she would see her daughter again after her grandparents forced her to give her up for adoption because they thought she was too young to have a child.
That was in 1965 when Pavey was just 18 years old.
Despite her physical separation from her daughter, Pavey felt an enduring bond between her and her baby.
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"Every day I've prayed for her, and her birthday would come and go," she told KVUE. "I wanted her with me, and I prayed that she would have a good mother and father."
Pavey later married and went on to have three more children. Despite having a family of her own, Pavey still continued searching for her long-lost baby. She even kept her maiden name in hopes that one day her daughter would find her.
Donna Shaw, one of Pavey's children, said their mom confided to them that she wanted very much to meet her first daughter to fill a void inside her.
"My mom was a great mom, but it was almost like something was missing with her," Shaw told ABC News. "It was like this indescribable sadness that was always there."
Although forever hopeful, Pavey harbored the thought that a reunion with her first child would only happen in heaven.
But then last week, decades later, something incredible happened: They managed to find each other.
Pavey's long-lost daughter, Sharon Glidden, now 52, found her mom on Facebook and reached out to her. Her discovery of her true mother came just two days after she learned that she was just adopted by a couple who had passed away.
After speaking on the phone, the two decided to meet at Pavey's home in Kingsland, Texas, a six-hour drive from Glidden's home in Henryetta, Oklahoma.
As soon as she saw Glidden outside her home, Pavey ran and the two hugged each other tightly for the first time in 52 years.
"I love you," Glidden told her mom, adding that for the first time she felt like she belonged.
"My eyes, my mouth," she said as she looked with wonder at her mom.
"From the time I conceived her, I wanted her," Pavey told ABC News. "I prayed and prayed, and as soon as I saw [pictures of] the adopted mother I said, 'Thank you, Lord, for taking care of my baby.'"
