An adopted woman came face-to-face with her birth mother for the first time, having tracked her down to a rural farm in Guatemala.
Utah native Kayela Sorenson can be seen tensely walking through the fields before finally meeting the woman who put her up for adoption when she was just six months old.
Having met, a heart-breaking scene then plays out, where Kayela, 23 – before she could even give her mother a hug – listened to her birth mother explain why she had much a difficult choice all those years ago.
With Kayela’s friend Karla Pensamiento translating, her mother, Maria Morales, explained how she had to give her up for adoption despite desperately wanting to keep her as a child.
Maria had Kayela when she was 21 years old but having become sick and with no partner to support her financially, she was unable to provide for her newborn baby as well as cover medical costs.
Facing the most difficult choice of her life, Kayela’s mother gave her up to a foster family in Guatemala when her daughter was around six months old.
Kayela was then adopted by a single mother from Utah when she was nine months old.
Maria explained: “You’re going to have to forgive me, because when I was young, I was very ignorant.
“I was sick, I was by myself, and I needed help from somebody that would support me.
“I was faced with a lot of obstacles in my life.”
Kayela stood crying throughout the explanation from a woman she had never met, before finally the pair embraced in floods of tears.
The moment took place on September 6, 2019 – a day that Kayela says she “will always have an imprint on my heart.”
She began her search for her mother in 2016, after a life-changing visit to her birth country.
-Scroll down to see emotional video below-
Having headed to Guatemala in October of that year, Kayela said she fell in love with the country, and knew she would regret not searching for her mother later in life.
The 23-year-old opted against hiring a private investigator, instead networking with Karla’s family and friends on the island to narrow down the location to San Marcos.
By her third trip to Guatemala this September, Kayela had managed to take her search to the county clerk’s office tied to a small town around Malacatán, San Marcos.
It was there, she said, that a representative named Jhoni Hernandez helped her find a location to head.
Filled with emotion, Kayela went to the farm where she believed her mother was living holding no expectations.
Since the meeting, she has returned to America and stayed in contact with her birth family through her half-brother in Guatemala, Yesner, 18, who has a cell phone.
Kayela’s adopted mother passed away when she was 17, she said, and she feels that finding her birth mom was an act of her adopted mom looking down on her.
Kayela said: “I made sure to not go with any expectations throughout the whole journey.
“Because if the moment were to ever happen, I wanted my current and raw emotions, thoughts and actions to release whatever my heart was speaking at that time.
“And all I remember from the moment is as I got out of the car nothing else in the world mattered.
“The moment I’ve been dreaming about for two-and-a-years had finally come.
“Once I came into eye contact with my mother, it was as if the world around me stopped and become blank.
“The space around me was blank, and the only two people in the world was my mother and I.”
Story courtesy of T&T Creative Media.
