The search for her birth family
In 1990, Hill began the search for her family. Adoption records were sealed so it took some help from one of her brothers to finally track down her biological mother which ended up taking three years. By that point, she was well on her way to becoming one of the hottest country singers in Nashville and was also in the midst of a breakup from her first husband, music executive Daniel Hill.
“That search consumed much of her energy,” Daniel Hill told PEOPLE in 1999. “Meeting her birth mother was the most profound life-altering experience for her. After that, her world turned upside down. I was part of her old world, and she had to let that world go. But there is no bitterness. I’m proud of her success.”
Everything going on in her personal life didn’t stop the country star from wanting to meet her mother face to face. But when she finally got to meet the tall blonde who looked just like her, she didn’t know what to say.
“The first time I met her I just stared at her,” Hill told PEOPLE. “I’d never seen anybody that looked anything like me. It was the awe of seeing someone you came from. It fills something.”
It also turned out there was more to her adoption story than she originally thought. HIll’s parents had raised her to believe that her birth mother became pregnant while having an affair with a married man and that’s why she decided to give her up for adoption. It turns out, her birth parents just weren’t married at the time so they chose adoption together. They ended up getting married down the road and had another child together named Zack. Though Hill’s biological father passed away before she could meet him, she was able to get to know her brother and saw her mother on occasion before she passed away in 2007. It apparently helped to find out that her birth mother was a professional painter as it helped explain why the “Mississippi Girl” singer had always felt a bit different from her adoptive family. She had a ton of creative energy that she inherited from her birth mom.