When new mom Shaney Mitchell, was waiting in her hospital room for food, she wasn't expecting to run into her estranged mother, whom she hadn't seen in 10 years. In a video shared on TikTok, she described the moment when she heard her mom's voice saying her name.
"My heart sank," she said. "I was in so much shock." She added that because she went into early labor, lost a lot of blood, and had an overall "traumatic" and "scary" birthing experience due to pregnancy complications, she actually thought she was hallucinating when her mom showed up to deliver her food.
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But she wasn't hallucinating, and her estranged mother was actually "coincidentally" delivering her food on the same day that she gave birth to her son.
"To this day, it's one of the craziest things that's ever happened to me," Shaney said. She admitted that the story is so unbelievable that it sounds made up, but she believes it happened for a reason. In a comment on her video, she explained that she needed closure and "inner child healing" in that moment.
Shaney hasn't had a relationship with her mom in 10 years due to childhood trauma. In another post, she listed some of the things that her mom did when she was growing up that "altered her brain chemistry," including burning her baby pictures because she was a "bad kid," locking her outside all day in the summer as punishment, and making her and her brothers move into a separate apartment when they were teenagers.
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Because of her traumatic childhood experiences, Shaney still has "a lot of angry emotion" for her mom. However, when her mom at the hospital, her "anger sort of diminished because it was such a huge moment in [her] life having [her] baby."
The "full circle moment" was completely unexpected and "emotional." "The day that I'm having my child, we're seeing each other again," she said.
Although it might not seem that weird that they ran into each other considering they both live in the same city, Shaney explained that she hasn't seen her mom at all in the past 10 years — not at the store, not "out and about."
But after all that time, she happened to see her on the day that she gave birth to her son.
One TikTok user suggested that Shaney seemed to be "living in a Lifetime movie."
Shaney said she and her mom cried for about 30 minutes, and being with her mother in that moment made her feel like a kid again.
Though the experience felt like more than a coincidence and seemed "spiritual" to Shaney, it didn't miraculously repair her relationship with her mom, and they still don't really have a relationship with each other.
Shaney's mom told her that she had been "praying for a moment" when she would be able to see her daughter again. Her mom also insisted that she didn't know whose food she was delivering.
Because they hadn't talked to each other in 10 years, her mom doesn't know anything about her and had no idea that Shaney was pregnant.
"She was in just as much shock as I was," Shaney explained.
While the experience is "the craziest thing that's happened to [her]" and seems like something that would only happen in a movie, other TikTok users have had similar experiences in real life.
"GIRL I was the delivery driver to my sister who I haven’t seen in over 10 years it was a trip," one person responded on TikTok.
Another person wrote, "I hid my first pregnancy, didn’t tell anyone when I was being induced and my grandma walked in the room as soon as it was time to push."
