Four decades ago, an orphaned teen with a disability became pregnant after five men raped her. Not ready to terminate her pregnancy, she ran away and gave birth to a healthy baby son.
The child was adopted into a loving family at 7 days old, and later in life, at the age of 27, he turned a personal tragedy of his own into the drive to uncover his roots and reunite with his birth mom. Now, he uses their incredible story to fight for the lives of all babies.
“I believe God innately put in her heart to fight for her baby and to me, that’s a miracle,” Mr. Holland told The Epoch Times. “My mom was mentally challenged, she was raped, she was homeless, all these things that were against us or against me, but I still have purpose, and I still have a beautiful life despite my conception, despite the circumstances around that.”
‘This Mentally Challenged Woman Knew the Value of Life’
Mr. Holland’s birth mother was Glenda Sue Holt, a ward of the state of Georgia her entire life. Mr. Holland knows nothing of her health or any diagnoses besides the fact that Ms. Holt “only functioned at an 11-year-old’s mental capacity.”When Ms. Holt aged out of her group home at 18, she was placed into a psychiatric facility where she was set up with a work program, allowing her to leave campus to attend her job.
“It was walking distance,” Mr. Holland said. “One evening on her way back from that job, she was raped by five men that attacked her, and from that attack on her, from that rape, she got pregnant with me.
“She was only 11 mentally, so you can imagine the trauma of that. She realized what happened to her. She didn’t tell anybody. She didn’t say anything. Quite a bit of time went by in the pregnancy until she started showing. They noticed that she was pregnant, and they immediately started to pressure her to abort me because it’s a state-run facility; she has no family, no resources, right? No money, no job. ... but this mentally challenged woman knew the value of life, and she said, ‘No, I’m gonna fight for my baby.’”
Ms. Holt ran away from the facility and found her way to Whitwell, Tennessee. Ms. Holt was nine months pregnant when she was discovered by a 16-year-old boy, who was skipping school, living in a cardboard box behind a grocery store. The boy took her home, and his family cared for Ms. Holt until she gave birth to her son in Chattanooga.
‘Love Goes Deeper Than DNA, Our Color, or Our Blood’
The Holland family learned about the baby and immediately took him into foster care.“[They] literally squeezed milk into my mouth,” Mr. Holland said. “They massaged my legs, they did everything they could to save my life, and I’m so grateful for them.”
Mr. Holland had no idea he was adopted until the age of 8 because he was “just loved.” He didn’t even notice that his first name, Steventhen, differed so vastly from his siblings’: Ricky, Rod, Rene, and Robin. It wasn’t until his classmates began to exclaim, “You’re the wrong color!” that Mr. Holland had questions for his family.
“They weren’t hiding it from me, they were just waiting on the time for me to realize,” he said. “This family, even though my color was different than theirs, they believed that love goes deeper than DNA, our color, or our blood, so they told me, from the moment that I was placed into their arms as a 7-day-old child, that I was their son.”
Finding Mom
Mr. Holland grew up going to church, safe and loved by his adoptive family, but carried the question through middle school, high school, and college: “Why didn’t my birth mom want me?”He met his future wife in college, and they married in 2006. The couple tragically lost their first and third babies to miscarriage. Something inside Mr. Holland told him it was time to find his birth mom.
Armed with her name and eight pages of typewriter paperwork from 1982, Mr. Holland took to Google to search for his mom. On day three of searching, he came across the website of a magician and ventriloquist from Spartanburg, South Carolina, named Steve Holt.
“I don’t like that stuff. ... I didn’t want to know about him, but something said, ‘Look on his bio,’” Mr. Holland said. “Long story short, every name that he mentions about his family is recorded on my paperwork, and one specific name, the important name, is Glenda Sue Holt.”
Mr. Holland had found his mother’s older brother.
“I didn’t know for sure if he was my uncle, so I was trying to think of the most non-intrusive, right way to do it,” Mr. Holland said. “I sent him an email, and I told him, I said, ‘I don’t know if this is true or not, but from everything I’ve seen, I think I’m maybe your long-lost nephew.’ ... He read the email, and [his wife said] he literally almost fell out of his chair in his home office.”
Around two months later, Mr. Holland boarded a plane to Spartanburg to meet his uncle. The pair hugged and cried, and Mr. Holland began to learn more about his mother’s family.
The Reunion
His mother had been one of six siblings who had lost their parents at an early age and had entered foster care or group homes. Mr. Holt is the only sibling without a disability.“The five siblings are mentally handicapped in some way,” Mr. Holland said. “Some of them were very severe, like not being able to feed themselves ... so for [my uncle] to meet me—I would put quotes around ‘normal’—a ‘normal’ family member was very healing, I think.”
Watch Mr. Holland sing Amazing Grace with his mom by his side. When he faltered at the second verse, overcome with emotion, his mom stepped in and finished the song:
“My uncle did a magic show for the residents,” Mr. Holland said. “We knew it would be heavy and potentially overwhelming, so we kind of wanted to lighten the mood. This plan that we had was to do this private interaction in her room, away from everyone, but God just had a different plan. I had a camera rolling ... we were able to capture that reunion.
‘Her Life Mattered As Well’
Mr. Holland gifted his birth mom a photo album that included photos of his life from the age of 7 days onward, and photos of his daughters, who lovingly named their biological grandma “GG,” short for Grandma Glenda. Mr. Holland and his family had 11 precious years with Ms. Holt before she passed away on Thanksgiving night of 2020 at the age of 57.“I wanted to rescue her, all of us did, but we didn’t have the resources to bring her to our home,” Mr. Holland said. “We would bring Barbie dolls ... it was just very playful and beautiful. I'd sit there and watch my mom, my birth mom, playing with my kids, but it was like four girls instead of three little girls.
Watch Mr. Holland’s birth mom meet his adoptive mom for the first time:
Meeting his birth mom and learning her story changed Mr. Holland’s life.
Mr. Holland has worked in ministry with his uncle, Mr. Holt, and founded his very own Broken Not Dead Ministry in 2018 to “bring hope and the gospel to broken people” by empowering them to tell their stories.
“I believe that there’s value in life from the womb to the tomb, so, until your heart stops beating and there’s no breath in your lungs, there’s purpose,” he told The Epoch Times. “I think, specifically, if you’re somebody that has been conceived in rape, like I was, you still have worth, and you still have value. My advice is: You were created on purpose for a purpose, and you need to walk in that identity.
“If it wasn’t for the Lord, I don’t think any of this would have happened. I have a story that He’s given me that I can share with the world to bring hope to people. I hope, and I pray there’ve been babies that have been saved.”
