An adopted child from Utah always wanted to meet his biological mother, but he probably never realized that she was only just down the hall.
Both working at St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City, Benjamin Hulleberg and his biological mother Holly Shearer were almost certainly in the building at the same moment, and they may have parked next to each other, even passed each other in the hallway.
It was always a dream to meet the woman he only knew as Holly, a person who his adopted parents never discouraged Benjamin from trying to find and meet.
He wrote letters, signed up with an adoption registry, and even took a DNA test in the hopes that the program’s algorithms could potentially lead to a clue—a cousin or second cousin that could put him on the trail.
Little did he know, Holly Shearer had never forgotten the child she put up for adoption as a young woman at the age of 20.
“He was always on my mind. More so on holidays and his birthday, roller coaster of emotions,” 36-year-old Shearer told Good Morning America. “I thought about him all the time.”
The Hulleberg family Benjamin was adopted sent photos and letters to Holly periodically. She also found Benjamin on Facebook. She kept her distance, not wanted to “throw a wrench” into what she saw as a rich and busy young adulthood.
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Eventually though, Shearer sent a Happy Birthday message to Benjamin, which turned his world upside down.
“I was crying. It was all very positive emotions,” he said. “But to me, this is a day I had been waiting for the past 20 years of my life and to imagine that it was finally happening was outrageous. It was a lot to take in.”
Deciding that he had waited long enough, he immediately asked to organize a reunion, and chose Red Robin restaurant, on the 21st of November as the time and place, as well as insisting the two bring the rest of their families. By then Benjamin had discovered he had a half-brother as well as a half-sister, so there was a lot of catching up to do.
After a tearful introduction, Shearer and Hulleberg discovered they worked in the same hospital—the former a medical assistant at the Heart Center, the latter a volunteer at the NICU.
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This has led to regularly-recurring coffee breaks between the two, which Hulleberg described as “amazing.”
Hulleberg described the whole process as “very healing,” and encourages anyone looking to still meet their biological parents to keep up the search, adding that it feels he can begin to live the rest of his life.
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