Woman Meets Biological Mom Just Months After Breast Cancer Diagnosis. Now They Talk Every Day: ‘I Love Her’ 

A single mother of three says her life unraveled this summer after a breast cancer diagnosis in August, followed by a dangerous bout of sepsis that nearly killed her. But the crushing loneliness she felt through those weeks began to lift when she met her biological mother for the first time last month.

“It was perfection for me to meet her,” says Ashley Pruitt, 41. “Just to lay my eyes on her and to know this lady carried me nine months and gave birth to me — that was beyond measure.”

Pruitt grew up in Conway, Arkansas, raised by adoptive parents in a rural, predominantly White community. As a child of Mexican descent, she often felt out of place. She speaks warmly of the couple who brought her up, but says she’d long felt a missing connection that only finding her birth family could fill.

“They were great parents,” she says. Still, she began searching for her biological relatives at age 11, convinced there was a different kind of bond waiting. “That’s why I continued my search and never gave up praying or hoping and believing,” she says. “There is just that different type of love.”

At home, Pruitt was juggling two jobs — working for the local school district and at a deli in North Little Rock — while raising her children, Kaiden, 19, Keelan, 12, and Ka’ori, 7. Then came the diagnosis. Soon after starting chemotherapy, her condition worsened rapidly.

“I was hospitalized a few days after chemo,” she says. “I had sores all over my face and mouth. I ended up getting sepsis.”

She spent about a week in the hospital. During that time, she says, a stark realization hit her about how small her support system felt — especially with her adoptive parents now elderly.

“God spoke to me in the middle of the night and he said if something had happened to me, I wouldn’t even have had enough people carry my casket,” she recalls. The next day, she says she got on her knees and prayed.

Not long after she was discharged, a message arrived that changed everything: a text from her biological aunt, who had located her through a DNA/Ancestry service.

Pruitt learned her biological father had died, but she had family in Texas who were eager to meet her. She asked that their names remain private. The news left her stunned.

“I always have something to say,” she says. “That was a moment and a day that I had nothing to say.”

Weeks later, she met her biological mother, brother, and cousin. Seeing her mom in person after 41 years — “happy and healthy,” she says — felt like a blessing she can’t fully describe.

She also reconnected with relatives from her biological father’s side. Some of those newly found family members were by her side earlier this month when she underwent a double mastectomy.

As she recovers, Pruitt has been learning more about her biological mother’s past — a story that echoes parts of her own. Her birth mother was in nursing school when she became pregnant and realized she couldn’t afford to raise another child.

“I have three kids of my own and financially it is very, very hard,” Pruitt says. “I can only imagine my mother being 24. She already had my brother and she was trying to better herself by going to school and then got pregnant with me.”

Looking ahead, Pruitt plans to move to Texas while continuing cancer treatment. She has started a GoFundMe to help cover the move and medical costs, since she’s unable to work right now.

“I feel like God wouldn’t have given me this big blessing if it wasn’t meant for me and my kids to get home to Texas,” she says. She talks with her biological mother every day now. “I love her with all my heart.”