A mom from Los Banos, California had something to be extra grateful for at Thanksgiving this year. Tina Bejarano would soon be reunited with her long-lost child, who she thought was dead for the last 30 years, all thanks to the help of a DNA test kit she had taken out of “curiosity”.

Almost three years ago now, in 2017, Tina’s eldest daughter was talking with her mother about wanting to know more about their heritage and convinced her mom to take the DNA test.

Not long thereafter, Tina discovered an email sent to her from a New Jersey man that read:

“I think we need to talk, it says we’re related, and it says you’re my mom.”

According to the mom, who couldn’t believe what she was reading at the time, she had grown up in a strained family situation.

When Tina was 17-years-old she got pregnant, but it wouldn’t be her first. She had already had a daughter by a different man but it didn’t work out. So, she moved in with her mom and step-dad for support. Finances were already strained, and when Tina told her parents about her pregnancy she said her mother gave her an ultimatum. She told Tina that she had to give one of the children up.

Forced to make a heartbreaking decision, Tina agreed to sign her unborn child up for adoption. However, when her baby was born and whisked away, Tina’s mom told her that the baby had died within just 15 minutes of being born. The already heartbroken teen mom was devastated even further.

“The next day, she comes back to tell me, ‘The baby died 15 minutes after it was born. It never made it. It was sick,” Tina recalled.

Not long after hearing her child died, Tina met and married the love of her life, Eric Gardere. The couple went on to have five more children together, but it never took the sting out of losing her second child. The couple would celebrate her birthday, and Tina would fall into depression every year around that time, sometimes lasting for weeks on end.

As it turns out, though, the mourning was for naught. Tina had given birth to a healthy, thriving baby girl that was adopted out within a week of being born.

So, why the email from the man claiming to be her child? The email had been sent by Kristin, who had transitioned to a man after many years of self-discovery. He grew up to have an adoring wife and a beautiful daughter of his own.

He also had been wanting to take the DNA test after having his baby girl. So, his in-laws bought him the DNA kit for Christmas. He never expected to get a pingback tying him directly to both his bio-mom and his older half-sister.

Since learning about his bio-family’s existence, Kristin has been keeping in close touch with them via texts and video-chat ever since. Gardere even claims that he looks at Kristin as his own long-lost son.

“We’ve been communicating with Kristen for a few months now. He calls me Dad, I call him Son, I text him every morning,” said Gardere.

To Tina, it doesn’t matter one iota if Kristin identifies as a man or a woman. The mom is just elated to know that her baby survived and that is a healthy, happy, and well-adjusted person. While she mourns not getting to spend his first 30 years with him, she is thankful that she gets to know him now.

The newly reunited family made plans to spend a few days together around Thanksgiving, and though it was emotionally exhausting, everyone was grateful to finally have the chance to meet face-to-face.

Kristin plans to continue getting to know his bio-family, saying that he felt a true and honest connection to them when they met. He runs his own blog about life as a trans-parent you can follow at TheTransDad.com to learn more about his experience meeting an entire other family he never knew he had.

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H/T: Shareably