A California woman reunited with her biological mother after spending more than 50 years apart and discovered her mom starred on one of her favorite TV sitcoms growing up.
“I grew up watching my mother on TV and didn’t even know it,” Lisa Wright told the Today Show on Friday about actress Lynne Moody.
Moody was an actress on the television show That’s My Mama, which had a two-season run in the 1970s and was a favorite in the household of Wright’s adoptive family.
“‘That’s My Mama’ — that was our must-see TV,” Wright recalled. “We all sat down and watched ‘That’s My Mama’ every week, and who knew? … that’s my mama!”
Although Wright always knew she was adopted, Wright did not start searching for blood relatives until she was an adult and had a child of her own. All she knew about her biological mother at the time was that she was 18 when she gave birth to her.
When Wright turned 54, her son suggested that she take a DNA test to discover her genetic lineage.
The test led her to an uncle who said that the family had been searching for her for years. He later connected her with Moody.
Both women happened to be living in the Los Angeles area and first spoke on the phone several years ago before meeting in person.
Moody, who gave her child up through a closed adoption, said she never gave birth to other children and had always dreamed of once again meeting her biological daughter.
“As a mother, you never, ever, ever forget,” Moody said. “During those 50 years, all I did was try to learn how to live with it.”
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