I Send Her All My Love
By Rosalie (she/her)
Adoptee, 25
Nanchang Project Volunteer
From Duchang, Jiangxi; Living in Québec
Hi everyone! My name is Rosalie, I am 25 years old, and I was born in Duchang, Jiangxi. I was adopted at 11 months by a family who is currently living in Québec, Canada. I am happy to share with you what I think about the search and reunion topic from an adoptee perspective.
First, let’s talk about the search part. To be honest with you, I haven’t started any process yet to try to find my birth family. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to find them one day or that I don’t think about them, but the entire process seems so long and terrifying for me. My adoptive parents never hid that I was adopted, but it wasn’t a topic that we talked a lot about. It wasn’t taboo at all. They were always willing to share with me their experience in China when they came to adopt me, but I guess that as I was getting older, I became shy to ask questions about that. I don’t really know why; it might be a way for me to protect myself from getting hurt by the answers that I already knew but that I wasn’t ready to hear out loud. So, as the questions piled up in my head, I started looking into how to find my birth family by myself. Of course, this process is not a one-person job, but I just wasn’t ready to talk about it to anyone. I didn’t do a lot of research, because just from the beginning, I saw how big this task was and I became overwhelmed by the process, which seemed impossible. At the time, I wasn’t good enough in English to read articles, blogs, and personal experiences from other adoptees, which means that I only read what was written in French (which I assure you is not a lot). I was discouraged by the number of bad outcomes that I read about, and all the fees related to searching. I thought that the chances of me succeeding at finding my birth family were so thin that all the efforts, the money, and the roller coaster of emotions weren’t worth it. So for a while, I just stopped reading about that, because it made me sad and alone. However, I never stopped hoping that one day, someone would magically knock on my door to tell me that they found my birth family.
Second, the reunion part. Let’s imagine that I somehow succeeded at finding my birth family (which is, according to me, not even a one in a million chance). I’m still not sure how the reunion in person would go, if I’m ready to meet my mother or my relatives, or if I’m ready to hear all the answers I’ve been waiting for… I think it would be strange to see people who look like me. I’m used to seeing other Asian adoptees in my school for example, and to hear people say we look alike, but seeing people with whom I share the same DNA seems kind of impossible. I’ve often thought about my birth mother, sometimes about my father and my hypothetical siblings, but it just occurred to me, a few weeks ago, that I have more than just these few people in my family. My friend who was born in Taiwan found her birth mother this year and she shared the news and process with me. She received pictures of her birth mother, her sister, and her aunt, who was getting married. When I saw the picture, I realized I might also have an aunt, an uncle, a grandmother and grandfather, etc. Of course, I was more than happy for my friend, but seeing that she was living my dream also made me sad; sad to realize I’ll probably never live what she was living. I think the first question I would ask if I could meet my mother would be why she gave me away.
Content Warning: The following paragraph includes mention of sexual assault.
My cartesian side tells me that I was given away because of the One Child Policy or because my mother was too young to keep me, but my heart is scared that she just didn’t want me, either because she didn’t want any children or because she got pregnant under bad circumstances like a rape or something as bad as that. I try not to think about that last option because I tend to spiral down…
My second question would be if she named me. I would love to know what my real name is, not the name given by the orphanage, but the name given by the person who gave birth to me. I don’t really know why this is so important to me, it’s not like it would change anything anyway, but I feel that a part of me is missing because I don’t know this information.
Sometimes, it is hard to not to think about all the bad possible outcomes of this situation, but I really try to imagine that my birth mother had no choice to give me away, that she still thinks about me, and that she would like us to be reunited someday. I imagine that she has a good life with my father, that she has enough money to cover all her basic needs, that she has access to education, that she has a job that she likes and that she is happy in her life. I would like her to know that I am safe, I have a great adoptive family who takes good care of me, that I didn’t forget about her, and I send her all my love.
Rosalie
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