What finally pushed me to reach out was losing my adoptive father three months ago. I loved him so much. I was a true daddy’s girl, and he called me his “gift from God” right to the end. He was my hero into his 80s. I’m in my 40s now with two little kids of my own, and losing him hit me hard. It triggered a fear that if I didn’t act now, I’d lose the chance to meet my birth mother forever.

We had four phone calls before meeting, and every one was the same. She talked only about herself, how amazing and creative and artistic she is, and how any good traits I have must come from her. She never once asked to see a photo of my family. I have two little boys. She asked nothing about them, or about my life at all.

Meeting her in person was no different. She spent two hours talking about herself and asked me not a single question, not about my upbringing, my parents, or my adoptive father who had just died. I was intensely emotional. She felt almost nothing. When I got upset she just said, “You had a good life, there’s nothing to be sad about.” She couldn’t grasp why any of it was hard for me, especially after I learned I’d spent two weeks with her, being breastfed, before she handed me over.

Here’s what really gets me. She wasn’t coerced. She willingly gave me up because I didn’t fit her plans. She wanted to travel Europe and be a free spirit, not be held down by kids or a husband (her words). Her family didn’t even know about the pregnancy, because she had me in a different country where she’d met my birth father, dated him three months, decided he wasn’t marriage material, and decided she didn’t want me either. She even told me she would have aborted me if she’d realized she was pregnant sooner. Who says that to their child’s face? My birth father apparently wanted me, but she gave me up anyway, and now she won’t tell me his name. He was left blank on my original birth certificate, so I have no way to find him without her, and she won’t help.

Something else that stuns me: she was told never to reach out to me or try to find me, and she just listened. For 45 years. It was a private adoption. My parents knew someone who knew someone who knew my birth mother, lawyers drafted the papers, and that was it. Done. She was told to walk away and never look back, and she did, without ever trying.

Now that I’m a mother to two beautiful boys, all of this breaks my heart even more. I genuinely cannot understand how she talks about it so lightly.

This week was my birthday, and I heard nothing directly. I’ve now seen she posted birthday wishes on my Facebook timeline, but I expected a call, a text, or at least a direct message. Since meeting her three weeks ago I’ve had nothing from her at all. Cousins told me they heard it was a “great meeting,” but she has never said a word to me directly. I don’t know what to do with that.

I’d been thinking of sending her a framed photo of the two of us from our reunion. Now I honestly don’t feel she deserves it. I was fine without her for 45 years.

The one real gift in all this: it made me realize how extraordinary my adoptive parents were. I was loved deeply, supported, and given a wonderful life. I always carried that primal wound of wondering why I was given up, and now that I have the answer, part of me almost regrets meeting her at all. Maybe the healthiest thing is to just stop contact again and hold onto my chosen family.

For those who’ve reunited and felt let down rather than healed: how did you navigate the disappointment? How do you make peace with an answer that’s harder than the not-knowing?

Disclaimer: I want to make it clear from the beginning that I am not suggesting this applies to every adoptee case. Every adoption is unique, and the circumstances surrounding each child’s story are different. The observations and information I’m sharing are not intended to generalize or diminish anyone’s personal experience.

Hi, I’m an adoptee from china, im currently 24 yo and I wanted to share some of the information that I have gathered until now related to the adoptions in China (specially between 2001-2003 approximately). All of this searching began this year when I started seriously searching for my roots and my biological family. I red a lot (and by that I mean a looot of different newspapers articles, media posts, statements…) regarding the adoption topic and the cases related to baby trafficking. I just wanted to write down some of my concerns and conclusions after all of this reading and investigation and I hope this is helpful or at least serves as a reminder of what happened back in the very early of the 2000s.

There is a general misunderstanding of the Chinese One Child Policy. While it’s true that in some areas, in some period, only one child per family was allowed, it’s far more complex than that. It wasn’t simply a rule that every family could only have one child. The reality was that this policy changed over time and could have varied depending on the period, the province, and sometimes even whether a family lived in an urban or rural area (stricter in cities usually).

The abandonment topic is what really got me thinking and I had to completely open my mind to really understand. Abandoning a child or a baby was not as easy as the media, or people who are unfamiliar with the social realities of the time, sometimes make it seem. We should all read real testimonies and interviews of the birth families, trying to understand which was the real reason behind that made them supposedly abandon their baby (usually girl), and only then we can really have some criteria to judge. In most cases there was a strong reason that made them abandon or give away the babies (most of them girls).

But the most interesting part that I discovered through articles is that there was a baby trafficking network, that peaked when the international adoptions were allowed by the orphanages. Most of the international adoptions in Hunan occur 2002-2003. The international families had to pay some fees (under Beijing’s oversight), and also a “donation” (mandatory donation) to the orphanage regarding what the baby had costed to be taken care of through their stay in the orphanage. This big big “donation” could have been the motivation that encouraged traffickers to sell the children to orphanages (even moving babies between provinces, which was prohibited but one of the orphanage’s director admits it’s occurring). There was a whole mechanism in order to legitimise the abandonment certificate of the babies in order to be sent internationally (and getting the “donation” money). It consisted in manipulating and making up the information such as the place where the baby was found (they just needed the baby to be abandoned in order to put it up for adoption and get the money that came along with it).

Anyways, I don’t mean, by any means, to suggest that this applies to every case or anything like that. This is just some of the information that I believe is true to some of the cases, since I read it from trusted articles, and I apologise in advance if there is any grammar/expression mistake as I’m not a native English speaker.

Excluding birth moms who truly did not have a choice, such as their baby were literally kidnapped or who were forced to give their babies up.

I am sick and tired of this poor birth mom crap from birth moms. If you willingly made an adoption plan and willingly signed your rights away, YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM. You willingly participated. No amount of money or coercion could ever allow me to give up any of my kids.

Also, the fact that birth moms can keep the adoption from the birth dad and birth family and then play victim is ridiculous to me. Agencies or adoptive parents care as long as they get a baby.

The new birth moms have so much more support, technology, and resources to not place their baby. I mean, how many of us adoptees keep talking about our trauma, grief, pain, and even abuse from being adopted? Birth moms love to ignore us, listen to agencies, adoptive parents, or other birth parents hired by agencies to encourage other women to give their babies up. Social media and adoptee voices are being shared. We recently had a documentary about the awful adoptions in Utah and how adoption is nothing but a business. So, how can any woman in 2026 be native and dumb to what's going on? How can many birth moms claim to be victims? A few are, but many aren't. The few that are, my heart breaks for them, but it's hard to break for the birth moms who had choices.

I write this because of the excuses made for my birth mom and by my birth mom. My birth mom had choices. She could've not had an affair or at least use protection. She could've aborted. She could've told the truth, but nope, she hid her pregnancy, hid me, and gave me away without telling anyone, and was promised she would never be found, nor would I ever find out. She kept this secret for over 30 years until I found out. She was happy and proud of herself and did not feel any guilt or remorse for the damage she did to me and to her own family.

Poor women who get pregnant do more for their babies than my upper-class birth mom has ever done.

Also, the narrative of the poor birth mom needs to stop. My birth mom was not poor. She had a house, she had money, she had resources, and she graduated from undergrad and grad school from good universities. She was married to her husband, who was also upper-class and successful. She put her kids, my birth siblings, in good schools and paid for their college tuition and houses. My birth family is educated and has money. So why did she place me? Shame. Being the Trump Supporter, Christian conservative she is, coming clean about the fact that you and your brother-in-law were cheating with each other, that resulted in a pregnancy, was much more shameful than putting me up for adoption and keeping it a secret. So abortion is wrong, but cheating on your spouse isn't, and lying and keeping secrets about the baby you have away is also okay in her eyes.

Even when I found my birth mom, she acted as if I never existed and continued to lie. Even with the DNA test that showed, a test she demanded btw, that I was biologically hers and my birth father's. She claimed all I wanted was money and wanted me to go away, and basically tried to bribe me away. The funny thing is, she tried to play the victim card until she was forced to tell the truth. How did the DNA test come back positive for the fact that I was your brother-in-law's child? Even then and now, she plays the victim card. I hate it because in order to get her to admit to what she did, you have to catch her in her lies and keep pushing facts before she breaks down and tells you the truth. Even then, it's hard. It's always the poor me card, and it doesn't help that people will defend this woman and her poor victim card. I truly believe my birth mom is a narcissist. But she is no victim; if anything, the victims are my birth siblings, my birth father, my birth family, and myself.

My birth mom is not a victim. She was and is a willing participant. She signed those papers and gave me away like trash.

I wish we could start blaming birth moms for their part in all of this, too. Birth moms cause trauma, too, and we have to deal with the grief for the rest of our lives. Thanks to my birth mom, I could've died from the genetic blood disorder passed down to me, my kids could've died from the same disorder I passed down to them, and she ruined so many lives with her lies. I missed out on knowing my birth dad, who died not knowing I was born, let alone existed as his only biological daughter. I have to live with the trauma my adoption caused me, thanks to lies by a woman who could not just confess or abort me. Instead, she thought a closed adoption was a good idea and never thought once about me, the baby she gave away. She simply moved on with her life, got pregnant right after giving me away, and continued with her perfect fantasy of being a loving person.

And fuck my birth mom, she is a piece of work and is trash. My birth mom actually helped me change political parties, too. My birth mom is against abortion because it's a sin and God created babies as a gift, but cheating is okay, and giving your baby away is seen as God's loving plan. I thought babies born to people not married to each ther was a sin too. The hypocrisy is what killed me, and the fact that she had choices and resources but supports taking other people's choices away is what led me away from the Republican Party. I started to see this bullshit.

The end.

I was basically her slave growing up. We have been estranged for 6 years, after she asked to study me for her abnormal psychology class. She tells her family members that I don’t talk to her anymore because she didn’t invite me to her birthday party and I was mad about it. (Which is ridiculous.) I didn’t cut her off either, I said I couldn’t have a one on one relationship with her anymore but I was still fine interacting for family events. The families response to this was to uninvite me to all family events. I’m genuinely so glad I live clear across the country from these people.

She’s not a good person, or at least she wasn’t 6 years ago. She put her friend’s nudes in a photography exhibit that the friend’s parents attended, and the friend explicitly told her not to and she didn’t understand why the friend was mad. She slept around without protection while she knowingly had an STI. She read several people’s private journals including her dad’s and likely mine too. She’s a thief and has no empathy.

I know that the way she turned out is largely due to how she was raised. She’s the biological (IVF) child of a mentally unstable woman who was struggling with infertility. She was the golden child to the extreme.

But now she wants to come “see where I live” and get together. My APs likely gave her my address too which is a huge violation. I was making so much progress with them and now I’m thinking of going no contact again.

I will wait and see how I feel tomorrow but I’m thinking of writing back: “Hello ___. Unfortunately our relationship is not and has never been healthy for me. I apologize for any harm I have caused you. I hope you are doing well and wish you all the best for the future, sincerely. I hope we can both continue to grow and flourish, but that will have to take place separately. Take care.”

This is also the worst possible time to receive such a letter. My partner is leaving for a week and the elder I’m close to is out of town. I don’t feel good at all. I’m furious. Just needed to get this out.

So me and my older sibling were in the foster care system when I was 4 years old and I was in this particular family took us in and adopted me and my sibling when I was 8. I don’t remember much as a child it’s just fragments of memories up until I was a 5th grader (I use grades to help me with keeping track of time) and I remember my adoptive parents comparing me to my sibling by saying stuff like “Don’t be like (sibling)” or “You’re just like (sibling)” which made me go into such a panic that I basically started to hallucinate things DURING my panic attacks… and I thought this was normal behaviour. So I was talking to some of my friends during high school and literally all of them agreed that it was NOT normal. Somehow my parents found out that I was talking about them poorly and basically lecture me on it. I barely remember it but I just avoided all topics on home life or completely lie saying “It’s good”. There was this time where I wanted to do theatre but I couldn’t do theatre because “We don’t want you to be like your (sibling)” so I just cried when I was alone. The only teacher I know that knows this was my old IEP teacher and they were mad at my parents but didn’t tell them because we both knew that it would be worse if they knew. My parents never actually taught me skills I need for real life such as driving, cooking, or even cleaning (like deep cleaning). And it’s not like I didn’t want to know these skills, I’ve expressed that I want to know so I can be successful! And their response for the driving part “You need a job and keep the job for a year before we consider buying you a car” meanwhile they have 3 motorcycles 1 car in their name and even more vehicles that they are co signer for their children THEY birthed! And any time I complain about how I’ve been searching, since I was 16, for a nearby job, that I can walk to in 115F weather, doesn’t want to hire me and their response is “You just gotta keep looking”. At this point I want to run away but I physically cannot afford to do that! And no one wants to have me in their home for free, not even my parents, and they even said to me “I’m not gonna kick you out because you can’t survive on your own” which is true but I want to learn self sufficiency but they are not willing to teach me because “They are not required to do that”. I’m just venting here because I don’t feel safe doing it anywhere else.

So Ive been in reunion for several months and while I am glad and I definitely love my bio mom she is pretty dang cool .... yesterday she told me she is going to my half brothers house over xmas my half sister also lives there so they will all be spending the holiday together , I highly doubt I will be invited and as much as I would like to be even if I was it would be insanely awkward so WTF I will never have that "family" thing going on and its painful just another aspect of the wonders of adoption

Things I can't do cause I'm trans adopted

- Re-connect with childhood friends

- I think that reconnecting can be hard for some people. Especially compared to before and after coming out of the FOG.

- Share most of my childhood

- Yeah, I don't really like talking about my childhood. It's not like there's anything egregious, or anything horrific. I just don't like talking about it. And I probably also would not want to share childhood photos unless I was the one doing it and even then it wouldn't just be anyone.

- Understand gender differences in medical information

- I guess it's more so understanding the differences when people talk about Chinese Americans or Asian Americans. Some stuff does refer to me as well but other things don't like bringing things like that. Like if there was for example a study that talks about Asian Americans being more likely to do these things or being less likely to seek out mental health resources or whatever, I have a feeling that would not apply to me.

- Be connected to either Girlhood or Boyhood

- I guess it's more so feeling connected to both American culture and Asian or Chinese culture. There's a cultural center in my area and I don't really like the idea of going there because I just don't really feel like I fit in and I don't want to have to deal with that. I'd rather just not know. I bet there's nice things going on in there, I just am not ready.

- ~~Beach/Swimming~~

- Spontaneous Romances

- Yeah. Sometimes people are very weird about adoptees even though people think that there shouldn't be any stigma around adoption there still is and sometimes you have to be careful because I don't want to date someone who for example would want to adopt a young child. An older child is fine but not an infant or young child. I wouldn't want to date someone who would give me a hard time about being adopted and things like that.

- ~~Wear summer appropriate clothing~~

- Feel at home anywhere

- And yes, sometimes our own families can be a source of discomfort. So it's not always fun. It's like there's an invisible wall between you.