On July 30, Kristin Chenoweth commemorated the day she was adopted with a reflective Instagram post.
“Yesterday was my GOTCHA DAY 🩷☀️ (it’s not just for pets!!) The day my parents brought me home 58 years ago and I became a Chenoweth,” she wrote alongside several photos with her parents, Junie and Jerry Chenoweth. “I’m so blessed and grateful for this beautiful life they gave me. I love you, mom and dad!!”
Her celebrity friends Ricki Lake and Cecily Strong commented congratualions on the post.
“Yayayayaayayayayayaay! I love you! ❤,” Lake wrote.
Chenoweth frequently honors her parents when she talks about them. Her life growing up in Oklahoma wasn’t glamorous, but her parents taught her important and valuable lessons.
Related: Kristin Chenoweth Mourns Biological Mother’s Death: ‘I Prayed for Her’
“Growing up, my parents explained my adoption by telling me, ‘We chose you.’ It was a wonderful way to put it to an adopted child. And I think it’s true. An adoption is a full-circle blessing,” Chenoweth said previously.
She actually met her birth mother for the first time in 2012 after her mother initially declined to meet her.
Chenoweth said, “I met her and I walked in the room and she went, ‘It’s you?!’ And I said hi and it was just like looking in the mirror. Also she said, ‘I hope you can forgive me’ and I said, ‘You gave me life and Junie Chenoweth, my mom, gave me a life. I have nothing but gratitude and love to you.’ So hi, mama Lynn!’”
They looked alike and even sounded alike. Her bio mom passed away in 2023.
“The 10 plus years I knew her were magic,” Chenoweth said. “So many things became clear to me about myself when I met her and came to really know her.”
She calls her bio mom an angel, as she prayed for Chenoweth every year on her birthday that she was having a perfect life.
“Which of course, I was,” the actress said. “I snuck away and prayed for her too, wishing that someday I would be allowed tell her ‘thank you,’ Which I did on 12/12/12. A beautiful day!” she said, adding that the two ‘didn’t leave anything unsaid in the end.’”
Chenoweth also shared photos of herself with her mom — who stood a little taller than Chenoweth’s 4’11 height.
Chenoweth looks back at her adoption story as the best thing that ever happened to her. She was blessed to have a birth mother who prayed for a good life for her and two adoptive parents who love her as much as any parents can.
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