I.

“Everyone is adopted,” I announced to my kindergarten class on the first day of school. To 5-year-old me, this was as normal as sharing your birthday or favorite color. 

After school, I spotted Prudence with her little brother, Miles. Their identical shade of brown curls and slightly tanned skin caught my eye. “The agency did a great job matching you two,” I observed. When Prudence’s mother frowned, I explained that all families were created through careful selection. My parents, brother and sister sent their photos to China, and the adoption agency found me — their perfect match.

The other children’s confusion soon escalated into what my teacher later coined “existential crises.” Confused by their reaction, I face my own crisis.

II.

My parents had always told me my adoption story. When we were stuck in Michigan traffic on the way to school, I’d beg my dad to tell it again. From my booster seat in the back, I’d kick my legs against the leather and clap my hands, giggling in anticipation. My mom, who grew up in Taiwan, would chime in with her favorite details — how she spoke Chinese on the phone with the adoption agency. She translated everything for my American dad, who, even after 10 years, could only ask where the bathroom was.

“Tell me the part about the twins again,” I’d prompt.

My dad would explain how the agency initially matched them with twin girls, but they declined, hoping for just one baby daughter. Then came the waiting. Months of silence. My parents wondered if they’d ever hear back at all.

After a long camping trip through Arizona and Utah’s Red Rock, my parents came home to a blinking light on the answering machine. The voicemail played in rapid Chinese. My mom pressed her ear against the phone, translating in real time, until her voice caught and her eyes widened. 

“We have a match!” she exclaimed. “A baby girl!”

Soon after, they flew to Nanchang, China, where I had been left on the orphanage steps at around four to six months old. The orphanage staff told my parents that I had cried so inconsolably that they placed me with a foster family, where my first word was “Gege”, older brother in Mandarin.

The moment my parents entered the room to meet me, my mom rushed forward with outstretched arms, making silly cooing noises. In response, I screamed. Not just a momentary cry. But hours of relentless wailing, so intense that my exhausted parents eventually hid in the tiny hotel bathroom, exchanging bewildered glances as they waited for my tiny lungs to give out.

Once I finally quieted, my mom tried to give me a bath. I thrashed so violently in the hotel tub that she gave up and resorted to the sink instead. At dinner, my dad offered me Cheerios, which I threw on the ground. Later, I picked them up off the floor, one by one, and fed them back to him, eyeing his unfamiliar face with the caution of stranger danger. 

My parents brought me home to Michigan, to my brother and sister. That’s when my dad would always say, “The end!” And I’d shout, “Again! Again!” — already giggling before he could start over.

III.

As I grew older, cracks began to form in the fairy tale. Back in kindergarten, other children started asking questions I had never considered: “Why’d they give you away?” “Why didn’t your real parents want you?” 

Their words confused me, but more than that, they left a sting I couldn’t explain. I felt exposed, like there was something wrong with me. Not because of anything I’d done, but simply because I existed in a way that felt off. I couldn’t name it or point to what exactly set me apart, just that the feeling made me want to curl into a ball in some dark corner until I disappeared.

One afternoon in second grade art class, my friends and I were shaping lumps of clay into animals. Kayla, remembering I’d once said I was adopted, looked up and asked, “So… who are your real parents?” A tightness rose in my throat, dry and aching. My clay turtle smushed between my fingers. “Oh my God, no,” I choked out. “I was joking about that.”

IV.

The only time my birth mother was ever mentioned was on my birthday. My mom would remind me that it wasn’t my real birthdate. It had been assigned by the orphanage. “But you’re very lucky,” she’d say. “Just like your birthdate. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese tradition.”

Around my seventh birthday, we were standing outside under the night sky when my mom pointed to the moon and remarked, “You know, your birth mom is looking at the same moon right now, thinking of you.”

I scowled, forcing out a laugh. “She probably doesn’t even remember me.” 

My mother paused, her eyes lingering on the moon. “A mother never forgets her child.”

“But I’m your daughter,” I snapped, frustrated by the idea that this unknown woman could somehow still be a part of me.

“Yes,” she replied gently, “but when someone gives birth, there’s always a connection. We all share the same moon.”

V.

Being visibly Chinese in my predominantly white elementary and middle schools only deepened my sense of otherness. My mom and I looked alike by default, only because she was the only other Asian person around. Beyond that, I saw no one who looked like me — not at school, not at church, not anywhere in our little Michigan suburb.

In third grade, classmates asked if I ate dogs, laughing as if it were the funniest thing. Then came the sing-song names, “Ching Chong Chang,” mimicking what they assumed a Chinese name should sound like. I laughed awkwardly, confused, unsure how to respond. My last name was Ukrainian, inherited from my white, European-American father.

Looking in the mirror became complicated. Staring at my black hair falling just past my shoulders and the dark eyes that turned into little crescent moons when I laughed, I didn’t see someone Chinese or white. I saw someone who didn’t belong. On standardized tests and school forms that asked for race, I never knew what to check. Sometimes I marked “Asian,” sometimes “White,” sometimes both. Most often, I circled “Other.”

At home, my parents often reminded me how lucky I was. If I didn’t finish dinner, my mom would say, “Children in China are starving.” If I misbehaved, she’d sigh, “We’ve given you so much. Imagine your life in China — being in an orphanage.”

My parents told me I came from an impoverished village, hoping I’d feel connected to my roots. But instead, I felt guilt and shame. When they offered to take me back to my birth city, I recoiled, “I don’t want to see poor and dirty people.” 

After my eighth birthday, I never spoke about my adoption again.

VI.

When I transferred to my new high school, I looked like everyone else for the first time. Yet, I felt more out of place than ever. The school had a larger Asian population, and on the surface, I blended in. In my advanced classes, teachers automatically grouped me with other Asian students, assuming I fit the same “traditional Chinese girl” mold: quiet, bookish, another one-dimensional overachiever. 

My ninth-grade honors English teacher was known for grading Asian students harder, pushing us under the guise of “expecting more.” Looking back, he was just plain racist. 

One day, after receiving a disappointing grade on a paper I worked hours on, I asked him how he came to that decision. My teacher barely glanced up from his computer. “You guys have parents who push you. I’m just trying to push you too.”

“Excuse me, my parents don’t push me,” I sputtered, barely hearing whatever bullshit justification he tossed back. “I’m not Chinese like that…” My cheeks burned. My mind scrambled, searching for something — anything — to make him see me differently. “I’m adopted,” I blurted.

For the first time in almost a decade, I publicly claimed my adoption. And, for the first time, people wanted to learn more about me. They leaned in, listened intently, asked questions. Being Chinese had never seemed cool or interesting to anyone, but being adopted? That gave me unexpected social currency and a way to escape the stereotypes that eclipsed my individuality. 

Classmates approached with the same hushed voice, eyebrows slightly furrowed: “Sorry if this is too personal, but… do you ever want to find your birth parents?” “Who do you consider your real parents?” “I’m not sure how to ask this one… do you know why your birth mom gave you away?” I developed a repertoire of smooth, practiced answers: “Finding my birth parents would be unrealistic, impossible. Basically a needle in a haystack.” “My real parents are the ones who raised me.” “I was probably given up because of the one-child policy. Adoption was very common back then.”

The questions never changed. Neither did my answers. At some point, they stopped feeling like pieces of me and started feeling like lines — the kind you repeat so often you forget they ever had meaning. 

VII.

Then came college. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t the high-achieving, composed version of myself I’d always been. I struggled with chronic health issues, difficult relationships, excruciating pain. Eventually, I took time off from school. For a long time, it felt like no matter what I did, I couldn’t fix anything — not my life, not my body, not even myself.

This pain cracked open parts of me I had long kept sealed. Through a depth of suffering I never imagined I could endure, something unexpected emerged, a deeper capacity to feel. Grief, despair, tenderness. Empathy, not just for others, but for myself. And slowly, without meaning to, I began thinking about my birth mother. 

I imagined my birth mother holding her baby for six months before laying her on the orphanage steps. I pictured the moment she let go. Her arms reaching for her daughter one last time, then falling limp at her sides. How did her heart feel? Did she call out my name? I wonder what she called me. For years, I buried these questions before they could fully form. Believing she didn’t care felt safer. It was easier to hate her than to open myself to the possibility that she might have loved me.

Letting her in felt like betrayal. My adoptive parents had done everything for me. They chose me, raised me, stayed. Acknowledging the woman who gave birth to me felt like rejecting all of their efforts. Wanting more felt ungrateful.

Love was who showed up. Storytime during car rides to school. Cooked dinners every evening. Arms wrapped around me when I cried. But grief taught me love isn’t only about presence. It’s about absence too.

In allowing myself to feel her pain, I began to recognize my own. Grief softened into a love shaped by empathy. A love that saw another’s suffering and ached alongside it. A love that hurt. 

When I looked in the mirror, I saw long, straight black hair framing crescent moon-shaped eyes, a small nose, a mouth that twisted slightly whenever I was thinking. I wondered what it would feel like to see my face in someone else’s. The closest I would ever come to seeing my birth mother was through my own reflection.

VIII.

As I try to write these words, my tears come in uncontrollable streams. How do you mourn something that happened before you could understand it? How do you miss someone you’ve never met?

I used to think sadness needed a reason. But some losses live in the body, even when the mind can’t trace their exact origin. The sadness I feel around adoption is not about something that happened. It’s about someone that never was. I was too young to remember my birth mother, too small to know her consciously. But a child doesn’t forget her mother. There’s a little girl in me who’s been heartbroken for as long as I can remember. In loving my birth mother, I’m letting that little girl mourn. Letting her speak. Letting her heal. And I’m learning to love her too.

On nights when sadness comes, I think about the moon my mom once pointed to on my birthday. Though my birth mother and I have never met and likely never will, we share more than blood and distant memories. We share this moon. Perhaps we share this ache — an invisible thread connecting us across oceans and lifetimes.