You have a birthday on Aug. 5, and you are from Zhanjiang in the Guangdong Province of China.
While we don't know for sure what happened, I believe that your birth mother must have cared about you very much, but she couldn't take care of a child as she wanted to. She kept you safe while you were with her, and I'll always be grateful to her for that.
This is the letter that Emma Wasserman's '16 mother read to her at night for the first four years of her life. The letter, written in 1999, is part of a book that her mother made to further explain how she was adopted.
Wasserman sees the adoption book as a source of comfort.
China had a strict one-child policy meant to control the nation's growing population size. Because of this law, newborn Wasserman was abandoned in a street and soon after taken to an orphanage. After three months, she was adopted by single mother Susan Wasserman, who had also adopted Annie '13 in 1995.
Despite feeling loved by her family, Wasserman said it is easy to feel like an outsider.
Wasserman said that sometimes the circumstances under which she was adopted can get to her.
While Wasserman stands out among her family because of her race, Cayla Blachman '15 said that most people can't tell that she is adopted.
Blachman was adopted as an infant. Although it sounds unusual, she said that sometimes she forgets that she was ever adopted in the first place. She credits these feelings to the fact that it is all she has ever known.
She feels like she has a normal relationship with her mom and said that she loves her just as much as she would love her birth mother.
If Blachman has any questions about her adoption, her mother answers them freely, she said.
Blachman said that the only time that her adoption ever comes up is when people ask about her father. She said that she then has to explain her adoption and that she's never had a father.
Like Wasserman and Blachman, Jack Flaherty '14 was raised by a single mother. Growing up, he felt more different due to having a single mother rather than the fact that he was adopted, he said.
Despite his mother's efforts, Flaherty said he was confused upon finding out he was adopted.
Flaherty said that he has conflicted feelings about wanting to meet his birth parents.
He said that he wants to know more now because he thinks he would be able to handle it better.
Katie Zipkin-Leed '15, who was adopted by gay couple Joseph Zipkin and Rick Leed, has visited her birth mother a few times and has contacted her somewhat irregularly. After her birth mother and her family moved out of the state, Zipkin-Leed has had limited contact with her. However, her birth mother and her adoptive parents have conversations over the phone and she comments on Zipkin-Leed's Facebook activity.
Even though she has contact with her biological mother, Zipkin-Leed said she knows nothing about her biological father.
Zipkin-Leed and her brother were adopted from separate families and have never felt isolated due to their unconventional family.
Zipkin-Leed thinks she was about 5 years old when she realized that she was adopted.
Zipkin-Leed thinks there is a common misconception that all children who were adopted were found in an orphanage. Like Blachman, Zipkin-Leed's parents were waiting in the hospital to pick her up.
Science teacher Jim Brink adopted his first daughter, Lacey, at an adoption agency three weeks after her birth.
Both of Brink's daughters, Lacey and Marissa, were adopted locally. Lacey's mother is from Glendora, and Marissa's mother is from Mexico, but gave birth to Marissa in Orange County. Both were adopted through Holy Family Adoption Services.
"For Lacey, the actual adoption was an emotionally charged process because the birth mom was actually there. The birth mother handed her to us physically," Brink said.
Brink said he is open about the fact that his two daughters are adopted.
Brink said he and his wife were required to fill out numerous papers as well as compile a profile in the form of a scrapbook in order to be considered for adoption.
It's important that his daughters have contact with other adopted kids, Brink said.
Brink's family, like many others, have created an environment in their home that leaves their adopted kids satisfied with their family dynamic.