This story is about a Malaysian adoptee who discovered at 14 that she was given away to save a marriage.Years later, meeting her biological mother forced her to confront race, rejection, and what family truly means.
When I was 14 years old, I found out I was adopted. It came as a shock and a surprise, because I look exactly like my adopted parents. For context, my mom is Chinese and my dad is Indian. Of course, this unique blend gives a pretty unique genetic trait. When my parents told me, I was in disbelief at first but slowly I started asking more questions about what they knew about my parents.
They said they know and met my birth mom, and that she agreed to give me up to be adopted. According to my parents, I’m their miracle child because they couldn’t get pregnant even after many fertility treatments.
My parents met in college, fell in love, and have been together ever since. According to them, they really wanted to start a family and after many years of trying and going to doctors, they were on the verge of giving up because nothing was working. According to my mom, she was praying everyday, going to Church almost daily to be granted a child. She said she didn’t care how she just wanted to be a mother. Then one day, in her prayers, she received a message from God that a child that needed her was coming and to go to the church support group. Now, I’m not sure to what extent I believe my mother but according to her this is the truth.
At the church support group, everyone was paired up for an exercise where they will share with each other what they are going through, and they will pray over each other. My mom was paired with a 30 something Chinese woman. According to my mom, this pairing was divine intervention, because it so happened this lady was pregnant and was not ready to be a mother, and my mom was desperately waiting to experience motherhood. They exchanged contacts, and as she will say “the rest is history”.
When I first heard this, I had so many questions that came to my head. Who was my father? Why didn’t they want me? The questions were endless. It bothered me for a large part of my teenage years and I started asking my parents many questions. I found out that they were in contact with my biological mother and would send her an update every year. When I was 16, I asked my parents if I could meet up with her because I had so many questions, and they said yes, once I turned 18. I agreed out of respect for my parents.
When I turned 18, again I asked my parents and this time they said yes and passed me the contact number. I messaged her over Whatsapp.
Getting to know my biological mother
When I first started messaging her, I immediately told her who I was and that I wanted to meet her. Her response shocked me. She said she was not ready yet, and wanted to get to know me over text yet. I was furious, angry and hurt.
I would later come to find out that she has a family, and they didn’t know about me and she didn’t want them to suspect anything. I tried to be mature about it, but it was hard. Upon further questioning, I found out that her children were older than me and younger than me. She has two sons four and eight years my senior and a daughter 2 years younger than me. That shocked me, meaning I was the only child that she gave away.
When I was around 20 years old, she messaged me and said she would like to meet. She said the guilt was eating her alive and she needed to see me. So when I decided to meet up with her. During that meeting, I decided to ask her why she gave up while she kept all her other children.
I knew it was a harsh question, but I needed to know the answer.
She looked down, then slowly picked up her phone, and opened her camera roll. She showed me a picture of her family. That’s when I realized why she gave me up. None of them looked like me. I had wild curly hair while all her children had pin straight Chinese hair. I had tanned skin while they were fair. She told me, she made a mistake when she was young. When she had troubles in her marriage, she seeked comfort in a man outside of her marriage, an Indian man who was her co-worker. She got pregnant, and she immediately knew the child was not her husband’s.
She eventually told her husband the truth, and he gave her an ultimatum. Give the child away or he would divorce her. He said he would not raise another man’s child. She also told me that her family was very conservative and being with an Indian was shamed upon, and she didn’t know if she would be able to love me because I would remind her that her marriage fell apart if she decided to keep me. She wanted to save her marriage and her family and decided giving me up was the best choice for all.
The aftermath
I was honestly disgusted when she told me that story. I couldn’t believe that someone could give their child up for that reason and I felt grateful that I was adopted because I would have hated to grow up with her as a mother. It was racist and condescending to see how she and her family thought about Indians. I asked her if my biological dad knew about me and she said no, she never told him.
I tried to get as much information as I could about him as she could remember.
I’ve not decided yet whether I want to contact him or not. The meeting with my biological mother was so disappointing that I can’t bear to be disappointed again. I’m still healing from the pain of that, and for now I’m focused on my studies and spending time with the family that adopted me and loved me as my own. It’s such a bonus to look exactly like my adopted family, because no one ever questions us. If God was real, perhaps my current family was conspired in the heavens.
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