the mirror’s reflection

and hoping that my daughter never sees what I see

My daughter moves with a knowing that every surface she jumps, runs, or twirls across is sure.

There is no caution in her body.

She goes at full speed, not yet having lived the consequences of moving too fast.

Energy moves up, down, and side to side through her tiny frame with power and heart, and most importantly, a self assuredness.

People fascinate her. Her curiosity about humanity, even at barely two years old, signals a depth and connectedness to the people in her orbit.

She’s never met a stranger.

Words fall out of her mouth at a surprising rate for her age, giving way to a degree of self expression that is beyond her years. Sometimes the words are in a beautiful melody, other times they’re laced in a tone of toddler frustration. In all instances through, these words are spoken with an imperative to be heard.

Her personality is fun-loving, hardly ever serious, and magnetic.

What I’m trying to say, is that my sweet child is confident, curious, and free.

I’ve been thinking about who my child is recently, because last week while having pizza with some friends in our courtyard, I was observing her and her friend. My girl was running around with boundless energy, giggling nonstop, and looking over her shoulder with a mischievous grin when she’d wander off into an area that she knew was off limits. Her friend was playful, but more reserved. Not cautious, but didn’t move with the same liveliness.

In that moment, all I could focus on was wanting her to eat some of her dinner. She’s not generally a big dinner eater, but I was hoping that she’d at least take a few bites of pizza. Sitting with my husband and the other parents, I sighed, “I wish she had a little bit more chill.” Meaning, I wanted her to be less absorbed in her surroundings so that she’d be mildly interested in filling her little tummy.

And then my husband said something that’s changed how I’ll look at my child forever.

“You know that she gets all of that from you.”

Suddenly I was flooded with memories of my early childhood. A free spirit of a young child, I could be found running around barefoot more often than not, I didn’t know what an inside voice was so I was always singing loud with abandon, and I made best friends with anyone (or dog) that crossed my path. There wasn’t an ounce of self consciousness or self-censorship in my being for most of my budding childhood.

In those 10 little words, my husband reminded me of my earliest and purest form. It was a reflection into the little girl who didn’t yet know the family betrayal that was around the corner and the way that the people who were supposed to take care of her would manipulate and dim her light.

I’ve spent the last five years really sitting in the dissolvement of my relationship with my parents, who adopted me and my twin straight out of the hospital, trying to make sense and understand just how we got here. The simplest, and most generalized answer is that I was never the child they wanted. Who I came into the world as would never fit the picture of the child that they hoped to have. So they, consciously and unconsciously, molded, manipulated, and threatened me into version of myself that facilitated their needs, forcing me to forgo my own.

It wasn’t until my early 30’s, and in a secure relationship with my now husband, that the fog began to clear from my eyes and I fully understood the depths of what my parents had denied me. Glaringly, they denied me ownership of my racial identity, but more broadly, they denied me the freedom to show up as myself for myself. Fast forward a few years, and I’ve finally started seeing a therapist who specializes in family systems and we’ve landed on the notion that my job in my family was to keep the harmony in balance.

I was the peacemaker.

In a family laced with unresolved trauma, the peacemaker leaves her body. Her needs cease to exist, and she learns that her behavior must contort to the needs and hopes of everyone around her, while she pushes her own needs, desires, and namely, her identity down. Her spirit goes blank so that there’s room to absorb and manage everyone else’s.

That evening in the courtyard, I found myself wanting my daughter to move through the world differently. Sure, my child will need to learn how to maneuver through life in a way that is safe and respectful, and yes, should attempt to eat dinner. But catching myself in these little moments where I want her to behave differently to quell my fear or anxiety (will she starve??) is where healing happens, not just for me, but for this generation of my family and the future legacy of our story.

I’ve come to contend that I will always hold two truths: I'm incredibly grateful for the awareness¹ of how my family history could impact my parenting if not seriously considered every single day, and I deeply grieve what I was denied by my parents.

In the last five years of our estrangement, this grief has only ever manifested in one way: Anytime I’m comforting my daughter when she’s crying or sick and her little body is entwined with mine, silent tears run down my face. I’m reminded that I’ll never have the arms of a parent to fall into or call or to be there for me in moments of need that only a parent can provide².

My therapist calls this awareness and the intentionality of how I’m raising my daughter a gift, and I agree. It’s my deepest hope is that this family heirloom never gets passed down to her own child, because she won’t have to acquire it the way that I did.

Sometimes writing about dramatic family stuff on the internet feels vulnerable and weird, but our society has a deep imbalance when it comes to the narrative of adoption. More often than not, the story is told through the adoptive parent’s point of view, leaving little space for the story of the child at the center of it all. In writing about my experience as a transracial adoptee, I hope that more people come to see adoption for what it is: messy, traumatic, sometimes wonderful, but always complicated.

Thanks for listening. <3 Meghan

Get this week’s playlist here.

1. Thousands of dollars in therapy later 🤪

2. And contending with the fact that even if I did somehow resolve the estrangement with my parents , I still don’t know that they have the capacity to be the parent’s that I need. Oof.