Mother reunites with daughter she was forced to give up for adoption 50 years ago

[2026/07/28] By 29 News/Julia Keller and Gray News staff

A Louisiana mother and the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption nearly 50 years ago met face-to-face for the first time, thanks to a genealogy website.

Lillian Higgins was 20 years old in 1976 when she gave birth to a baby girl who she says her family pressured her into giving up for adoption. Higgins believes her mother, in particular, was insistent on adoption because her daughter was of mixed race.

“My mother, basically, took it upon herself that she said, ‘Yes, she’s giving her up.’ Because she is a mixed child,” Higgins said. “Before we left... I looked back, and I told her, ‘One day, I’m going to find you, or one day, you’re going to look for me.’”

Higgins never forgot about her daughter, saying she thought about her often, especially on her birthday, September 17.

“I always remembered her birthday every year. I would tell her, ‘Happy birthday, wherever you at, baby girl. Happy birthday. You know, maybe one day you’ll look me up. You’ll try to find me,’” Higgins said.

Decades after the adoption, one of Higgins’ relatives decided to sign up for the genealogy website 23andMe. When her DNA was put in the system, it showed she was related to a woman named Heather Palmer.

It turned out that Palmer was 49 years old, her birthday was in September, she was mixed-race and had been raised in a family with 12 adoptive siblings.

Of her siblings, Palmer says she was the only one without a connection to her birth family. She spent a long time searching for her biological parents without results and had been registered on genealogy databases for years.

“We live in the 21st century. Let me do this thing. But then, I was on for two or three years, and I didn’t get any DNA hits,” Palmer said. “Out of the blue, a couple of years after that, I got a hit from my birth niece.”

As the pieces began to fit together, Higgins’ family convinced her to take a DNA test to confirm what they already suspected.

“It showed that her name was Heather, and it showed that she was my biological daughter,” Higgins said. “I knew then that I found her after 50 years.”

The mother and daughter connected by phone and soon had plans to meet in person. Palmer and her family packed up the car and headed south from Oklahoma, arriving in Pineville, Louisiana, on Friday.

“That’s one of my best moments in my whole world. Heather was the first one to walk in the front door, and I seen her for the first time. ‘Oh my God, you’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.’ And we hugged each other, of course,” Higgins said.

Palmer said meeting her biological mother felt somehow familiar despite a lifetime apart.

“When we got together and started talking, it was like old friends, old family. Like we’ve known each other already... It doesn’t feel like we haven’t met. It feels like I’ve known my family for a long time,” Palmer said.

She said she hopes their reunion is just the first of many as they make up for lost time.

“A lot more visits to Louisiana,” Palmer said. ”I hope that they would load up and come to Oklahoma... But I look forward to a lot of years of connecting and hanging out and getting to know each other.”

The mother and daughter say the nearly 50-year wait was well worth it.

“If you have to give your baby up, you’ll feel heartbroken,” Higgins said. “But don’t ever give up. Because look at me now. It’s worked out. It took 50 years... but it’ll work out for you.”

 News from：29 News