Mother Reunited With Her Long-Lost Son She Was Forced To Give Up 48 Years Earlier

Jun 14, 2023

Kirk Kellerhals was just 2 years old when he was adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam. Nearly 50 years and another continent later, in 2017, he was miraculously reunited with his biological mother.

Giving up a child is a traumatic experience. This is especially true if it's due to certain circumstances and not the parent's own will. That was the situation for a young Vietnamese teenager who, upon giving up her child, did not give up hope that she would meet him again. Having held on to hope for 48 years, she finally got to meet her son again in an emotional reunion.

It was a nightmare for Thuy-Nga Thi Nibblet when she conceived her son in her teenage years. CBN News reported that she became expectant during the Vietnam War. This was after getting romantically involved with an American military man. Her son was half-Vietnamese/half-American. This was something that Nibblet’s father could not accept.

She gave birth to her son after spending months in an orphanage where her father had taken her while expectant. This led to Nibblet losing all contact with the child’s father. When the child was born, Nibblet’s father took him to an orphanage. All that Nibblet knew from her father was that she gave birth to a son but was not allowed to see him.

After two years had passed, the boy was adopted by an American family, and named Kirk Kellerhals. He was raised in the United States, far away from his biological mother. The family that adopted him remained honest about his adoption, and Kellerhals assumed that his parents died in the Vietnam War. This was the reason why, he believed, he ended up at the orphanage. 

Kellerhals lived with this belief until that changed one day. Out of the desire to want to know more about where he came from, he submitted his information to an online DNA database.

After a few weeks had passed, Kellerhals received an email message that was rather vague. The email contained a telephone number that requested him to call. Although uncertain about what it was about, he decided to call the number.

On the other side was a woman and the words she said upon answering the call made Kellerhals' feet cold. She told him that she thought he was her son. 

The woman on the phone was Nibblet. Soon after, she and Kellerhals began to share stories and information about each other. This revealed that Kellerhals was born on the same day that Nibblet gave birth to her son.

At that time, the online DNA database had already reached out to inform Kellerhals they had found a DNA match, but he'd dismissed the finding. Now he realized they had actually found his mother in Nibblet.

Nibblet was no longer living in Vietnam as she had migrated to Texas, where she was married. She and her husband then made plans to take a trip to meet Kellerhals. After one long drive, Kellerhals and Nibblet’s lives were changed forever. She got to not only meet her long-lost son for the first time, but she also met her daughter-in-law as well as her grandchildren.

This was a very emotional moment, a family reunion like none other. Nibblet was unable to hold back tears as she embraced her son for the first time since she was never allowed to see him after giving birth to him.

Incredibly, Nibblet had one more surprise for Kellerhals — his biological father, Sheldon "Skip" Soule, 74 at the time, was alive and based in New York. The long-lost family all reunited, and Kellerhals even met his half-siblings on both sides. 

“When we talked, the parental bond felt so natural,” he told People in 2019. “You can’t put it in words. From the very first conversation we had, it ended with, ‘I love you.’"

What a heartwarming story of never giving up hope. If you were in a similar situation would you continue to look for your long-lost parent or child? Why or why not? Pass this article to your friends and family to brighten their day.