Adoption & Identity – A Voice Stolen Before I Could Even Speak

Growing Up with Holes in My Memory

They told me I was lucky.
They said I was saved.
But no one ever asked me what it feels like to live a life I don’t recognize.

This page is what I wish I had read at twelve years old.
When I looked in the mirror and didn’t understand why nothing looked like me.

What Is Nowhere Written in an Adoption File

• Birthdays without memories, but with tears.

• A painful bicultural identity that keeps you unsettled.

• Love and guilt intertwined when thinking of your birth mother.

• A story of returning home without a manual.

I ran away. Then I came back. But I didn’t know where to return to.

I didn’t return to Vietnam as a tourist.
I came back as an inner exile, not knowing what I was looking for.
But I knew I couldn’t keep pretending anymore.

And writing was the only thing that never betrayed me.

What you’ll read here are pieces of me.

Unsent letters.
Reassembled memories.
Silences put into words for the first time.

Each text is a fragment of reconstructed memory.

Are you adopted? Do you live between two cultures? Then…

Some Texts to Read When You’re Ready

• I Was Born in Vietnam, But Told Another Story

• Can You Love Two Mothers Without Feeling Guilty?

• Adopted, Adult, and Still Learning to Say “I”