Mom bakes a birthday cake for her stolen daughter every year. She didn’t expect this to happen four decades later before discovering she was pregnant. Nancy Womack lived in an orphanage in Dalton, Georgia. After knowing she would soon give birth, the orphanage authority sent her to Bethesda Home For Girls. The teenager had no idea what was waiting for her in the new place.
Behind closed doors, strange things turned Womack’s stay into a nightmare. As a child, Womack and her siblings lived with their grandparents. After their demise, a Dalton-based orphanage took the responsibility of taking care of Womack. After spending a few years there, she fell in love with a man and got pregnant when she was 16. Since the orphanage couldn’t bear the responsibility of raising a child, they sent her to the Bethesda Home for Girls, known for raising troubled children.
She recalled it was a long dirt road from the main road down to Bethesda. It just kept going and kept going, and then it opened up to this long white building. It was like a nightmare. The home claimed they trained children according to religious teachings, but something else was happening behind closed doors. The women confessed they had no free will.
The homeowners controlled Womack’s life to the extent that she had planned to run away from that place. However, she couldn’t escape because the main doors were always locked. The Bethesda authorities dictated the girls’ lives and decided where their children would go. They forced many mothers to give up their children to families willing to pay a good amount of money. Womack gave birth to her daughter in June 1979 but never got the chance to take her baby in her arms.
She yearned for a glimpse of her child for decades. The Bethesda authorities took her to East Ridge, Tennessee when it was time for her delivery. She remembers that she fell unconscious after they gave her a shot, recounting, “I don’t remember having her. I don’t remember them wheeling me into the delivery room. I don’t remember anything.
She was then gone by the time she woke up. The 16-year-old girl was ready to have a child and take care of her, but the Bethesda authorities had planned something else. They took her daughter away from her before she could take a glimpse. She had built an imaginary picture of her daughter in her mind and would often wonder where she’d be going. She baked a birthday cake for her every year and celebrated her milestones, assuming she would have achieved them.
She confessed, “I remember thinking, well, she should be taking her first step now, or she should have lost her first tooth, or her first day of school should have started.” Little did she know that her daughter, Melanie Spencer, was as curious to learn more about her as she was. A missionary couple had adopted her and raised her in Indonesia and South Africa. They told her that her mother wanted her to go to a good Christian home. The little girl wasn’t satisfied with the information her parents gave her.
She had many questions regarding her birth mother and was curious to learn more about her. She recalled, “I wanted to find her. I wanted to know more about her. I think there was fear that it would be very hurtful if I dug more and found out that she didn’t want me.” Spencer moved to the U.
for her higher education and started working as a counselor. She never thought about Womack until she had her own children and wondered what she could tell them if they asked about her ancestors. She decided to take an ancestry DNA test to learn more about her birth parents and curiously waited for the results. Luckily, the test results led her to Womack’s sister, Cheryl Blackwell. She sent her a message hoping she would connect her to her mother, but Blackwell didn’t check her inbox until a year later.
Blackwell immediately contacted Womack and Spencer after reading the message. They added each other as friends on Facebook and chatted with tears in their eyes. Womack told her daughter how glad she was to talk to her finally. Spencer also said she always wanted to know who her birth mother was, and talking to her on Facebook seemed surreal. Womack replied, “There’s not a day goes by that I have not thought of you.
I want you to know that you are loved so much.” After talking to her mother, Spencer decided to drive from her house in Maryland to her mother’s place in Georgia. It wasn’t easy to believe that she would finally see her mother after four decades. Her anxiousness turned into tears when she saw her mother for the first time. On the other hand, Womack was overwhelmed to see her firstborn, the girl who had only lived in her imagination.
The mother-daughter duo spent several days together before Spencer returned to her house. Womack hopes to inspire other Bethesda survivors by sharing her miraculous story with them. She never thought she would meet her long-lost daughter, but fate planned their reunion when they were separated.
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