I always knew I was adopted—not because I thought I looked different from my parents (because I really didn’t think so), but because my parents always read me stories about it. I was part of the first wave of Chinese adoptees, a mass exodus beginning in 1991 (I was adopted in 1998) characterized by mostly female infants who were filling China’s orphanages due to the One Child Policy in effect from 1979 to 2015. It has been estimated that about 110,000 children from China have been adopted internationally, with most adoptees now living in the United States like me.

From the very beginning, Chinese adoption had a very strong sense of community, centered around the almost religious belief that Chinese baby girls were unwanted and abandoned by their birthfamilies. This had been the adage the world news had been spreading, echoed from every corner of the globe. Indeed, the stories that my parents read to me at night, written specifically for Chinese adoptees, told of the night that my birthmom needed to sneak out of the house and place me in a public place so that I would be found by a nice policeman and taken to the orphanage in the morning. My parents could not with a child get into the details of why exactly my birthmom would need to do all this in secret, but they tried to place any blame on the Chinese government and the law, wisely deciding early on that my birthparents should be given the utmost love and respect, and should not be painted as the villains. There was never any reason to doubt this story as all Chinese adoptees, including me, were given official abandonment documents that said when and where we were abandoned.

Growing up around Philadelphia, there were plenty of Chinese adoptees in the area. I absolutely never felt that my family was not normal because we were a demographic in our own right with our own get-togethers. The neighborhood I grew up in and the public schools I attended were extremely diverse—something I appreciated much more as I grew older. Because of this, I was not bullied for my race or for being an adoptee. Being adopted was normal for me and I was always a little surprised when my friends’ parents looked like them. I don’t recall any friends ever seeming surprised that my parents were white and most often when I told someone I was adopted they didn’t blink an eyelash because it was just so normal.

The Chinese community welcomed us adoptees with open arms. At Chinese school, they made a special language class just for us adoptees and our adoptive parents. Someone in the neighborhood made an all Chinese adoptee traditional dance troupe and there were plenty of Families with Children from China (FCC) events to go to. I mention these experiences because when I tell people that “I am a transracial adoptee with white parents,” I think there’s an automatic (and rude!) assumption that I’ve been “starved for culture.” Yet, for all of these programs, some of which I enjoyed more than others, I drew my largest sense of identity from growing up with other Chinese Americans. I very confidently identify as a Chinese American woman and I’m just as Chinese as any of my Chinese American friends.

Given that I didn’t think being an adoptee was particularly special, for years I had no doubt in my mind that adoption was not affecting me. While I was always very open about wanting to find my birthmother in particular, I was also very aware that China was the most populous country and that under the circumstances of the One Child Policy it had been made impossible to track her down. My birthmother was not allowed to give birth to me, or allowed to keep me, or allowed to bring me to the orphanage—hence the only option was to abandon me in secret. This meant I had no names or addresses to go on! I was also always very sad to believe I was abandoned, because that is such an ugly word that carries with it unwanted, with absolutely zero context of what my birthmother had to go through. I also had to make peace pretty early on with the fact that I had no idea what my given name was, as my Chinese name was assigned to me systematically by the orphanage, as was my birthday.

But I was still “in the fog.” I had no idea about pre-verbal PTSD, separation trauma, or hypervigilance, why I sat by the exits for a quick escape, or why I had panic attacks when I felt my safety was threatened by seemingly ordinary things. I also had no idea that I had insecure anxious attachment, meaning that I was really, really close to my parents. It was what made it particularly difficult my first year away from home at college. Cognitive behavioral therapy really helped me to sort through many of these very early thoughts and feelings, because it is very powerful just being seen and understood.

I came “out of the fog” after my first year of college and my journey of self-discovery quickly accelerated, especially when I learned that my orphanage, like most others, had actually forged abandonment documents and actively prevented birthfamily reunions. (I highly recommend watching One Child Nation to understand more.) To make a long-story short, though it had been pounded into our heads that we were abandoned, the truth in the majority of cases was that our birthparents relinquished us to individuals who could be trusted to bring us safely to the orphanage. This changed everything. Yes, there were abandonments, but they were forced abandonments because the law gave birthparents no choice. There were also police confiscations of infants and children for families who violated the One Child Policy. So many things actually happened in China that I’ve tried to document. So many women were forced to undergo abortions and were forced to be sterilized. Because of censorship in China, much of this was only known in pieces to the outside world, and now because of DNA matches, we are finally getting the truth about what happened.

Looking back, I suppose it could be fate that I was adopted from the Dianbai orphanage in Guangdong province, because this was how I knew of the Stuy family who organized a few Dianbai reunions. For years, Lan and Brian Stuy have been working to unite birthfamilies and adoptees via their organization DNA Connect. Suddenly, the impossible was unbearably possible. Adoptive and birthfamilies were coming together and the lies each side was fed were finally being scrubbed away. It is so painful to want something so much, but I can’t help but hope that I’ll get a match someday too. Even if I never get a match, there is something liberating about knowing the truth about what happened to us collectively so many years ago in China. It may not seem like it should matter to my current everyday life in America, but it does, because I am so much more solid in who I am. I cannot begin to express how much lighter I feel to finally, finally learn more of the truth.

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You can read more and connect with Yuna at her blog, Hello Noble Soul

Photo credit: Rawdyl at Unsplash