Former Miss Nevada Elizabeth Hunterton, who was abandoned at an airport when she was a baby and was later adopted by a family in Reno, recently met her birth mom — a moment she said she's been preparing for throughout her whole life. Speaking to People, she called the moments leading up to the meeting "difficult." In a video shared on TikTok, she shared that she is "okay" even though she is "working through it."
In the video, she talked about how meeting her birth mom left her with more questions, but still, she said, "Overall, I'm really glad I did it."
In another video, Elizabeth responded to a question that a lot of people had asked her when she shared that she wanted to meet her birth mom: "Why would I want to meet my biological mother after she abandoned me?"
Elizabeth wanted to find her birth mother for several reasons.
She explained that part of the reason that she wanted to meet her birth mom was because she had questions that her adoptive parents weren't able to answer. Additionally, her adoptive mom encouraged her to find her birth mom.
"My mom always said that she hoped one day I would find my birth mother so she could thank her for me," Elizabeth explained on TikTok. "So ever since I was little, I knew that that was a gift I wanted to give my mom."
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Speaking to People, Elizabeth revealed that she did have the opportunity to share this message with her birth mother, and that it was "a really beautiful moment."
Elizabeth's mom's request was: "please thank her for you," as per People. Elizabeth described the moment when she shared this message with her birth mother: "When I told my birth mother this she teared up and said, 'I have the utmost love, respect and appreciation for your mom. She gave you what I couldn’t,'" Elizabeth told the outlet.
On TikTok, Elizabeth said that she wanted to find her birth mother because she "wanted the information you get just by being born rather than being found."
Elizabeth was able to identify her father in 2018 with the help of DNA databases, but he had already died at that time. She was later able to find her birth mother in 2020 after lots of searching, which she has explained in depth on TikTok.
As "a former Baby Jane Doe," Elizabeth wanted to find her birth mother because she wanted to know basic information that she never knew about herself: what day she was born, her ancestral background and other information that "so many of you take for granted."
While telling her story via TikTok, Elizabeth revealed that she also doesn't believe that her birth mother really wanted to leave her at the airport — her friend did. Meeting her birth mother confirmed that, she told People.
"Hearing from her what happened after she learned that her friend had abandoned me at the airport rather than the adoption agency as they’d agreed, was heartbreaking," she told People. "The pain of her friend’s betrayal is still there."
In the days leading up to meeting her birth mother, Elizabeth said that she was ready and felt "at peace." However, as she and her husband approached the location where she was supposed to meet her birth mother, she almost left.
"I stopped walking," she admitted in a video. "I almost turned around." But she's "so grateful" that she didn't. She admitted that meeting her birth mother was "complicated" and not easy, but overall, the experience was "positive."
