Mom runs into son at Walmart 19 years after putting him up for adoption in emotional reunion

Sometimes when parents make the difficult choice of giving up their children for adoption, they decide to do so in the best interest of the child. Amanda Rector faced a similar plight when she gave birth to Hunter in 2004, per TODAY. The mom was struggling with addiction at the time and had already lost custody of her oldest son Jameson. “When Hunter came out he was so uncomfortable, and my heart … I just shut down. I knew if I looked at him for too long, I would start to hurt and I couldn’t feel that hurt,” Rector recalled. When she was asked by the nurse how she planned to care for the child, she had no valid response.

"I had nothing. And she was like, 'You know you're not going to be able to take this baby home,' and I said, 'I know,'" Rector explained. The mom was shortly back to the same hospital after her boyfriend developed an abscess on his arm from heroin. “We were waiting for a good two hours before it even occurred to me that I could go and see the baby. That's how far gone I was,” Rector added. On realizing this, the mom headed over to the nursery to see Hunter. She requested the nurse for a visit. “You could see she was heartbroken by the sight of me and the whole situation, and she was like, ‘Of course you can see him,’” she recalled.

“All those feelings I had been bottling up cracked wide open,” she remarked. While Hunter was adopted by a family, the mom found herself in an armed robbery and found herself in prison. In prison, Rector found her faith in God and was determined to turn her life around. She started by joining a program and the choir there. She wrote a letter to Hunter’s adoptive dad but received no response. When the mom was released, she headed out to get custody of her son Jameson. Then one day, she spotted Hunter at a cancer fundraiser. “I grabbed Jameson’s hand and I was like, ‘That’s your brother!’” Rector exclaimed.

However, the mom chose not to greet her son and come forward because she believed “it wasn’t her place” to do so. Fourteen years later, Rector was at a Walmart when she noticed that a teenage girl was talking to her son Jameson. She asked him his name and when the boy responded, she pointed towards Hunter and said, "That's your brother." Hunter had already been looking out for his biological mother and knew their identities. The mom was anxious upon seeing her son wondering if he was "mad" and would "cuss" her out. However, to her disbelief, the boy stepped up and hugged his biological mom. Rector shared a post on Instagram writing, “Imagine wondering for 18 years if he hated you only to find out he saw it as an act of love.”

““I had just been talking about wanting to meet Amanda and then she appeared. If I wasn’t God-centered, I don’t believe any of this would have happened,” Hunter remarked. Though Hunter is still with his adoptive parents, he ensures he meets Rector once a week. The duo have reconciled and share a bond “like never before.”

This article originally appeared on 5.17.24.