ATLANTA — Call it a reunion 35 years in the making -- just in time for Mother's Day.
Thousands of children, adopted illegally from Chile, are finally making their way back to their birth families. One of the reunions happened in Atlanta on Thursday.
"I think I've been crying every day," she said. "Sometimes tears of joy, sometime tears of loss."
There were thousands of people waiting at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, but likely none waiting longer than Cara Miranda. She has been waiting her whole life for this.
"I am meeting my biological mom for the first time," she shared.
Miranda, now 35, was adopted from Chile in 1988. But it's an old wound starting to heal thanks to new technology.
"I was scrolling through TikTok and there was a girl there, live, talking about being adopted and her tag line name was 'stolen adoptee,'" Miranda recalled. "I thought that was interesting, so I messaged her."
Cara discovered she was one of those stolen adoptees, too.
She started working with Nos Buscamos, an organization tracking illegal adoptions from Chile from the 1950s to the 1990s. Mothers, Miranda described, were coerced into giving their babies up, and if they refused, they were told their babies died. But, "We were stolen," she said.
Miranda said she always knew she was adopted by her parents in the United States, but she never knew how.
"I had these things in my mind growing up," she recalled. "I don't fit in anywhere. I don't understand myself fully."
Miranda said she often thought of her birth mother, especially on her birthday and on Mother's Day.
"'Is she okay?'" she often wondered. "Do I have siblings?"
On Thursday, just beyond the security gates at the airport, she finally got her answers. 11Alive was there to capture the reunion between mother and daughter. Miranda described the indescribable: "It just feels like home."
"It really feels like family and a sense of belonging," she explained." That we are the same."
They are still learning to communicate with each other, using a translator on their cellphones to talk. But without saying a word, they understand that their hearts are the same.
"Incredible," she described. "As soon as I saw her, I just felt so much love and it just felt like family."
The two will spend 10 days together before her mom flies home to Chile, but both know they will never wait this long to see each other again.
Nos Buscamos is currently working to reunite 5,000 children with their birth parents, a particularly difficult task because many of the people and organizations that facilitated the illegal adoptions are no longer around.