ICSA
Birth Parent Stories
As more birth parents are located, we are hearing more stories about how children became separated from the original families. We will feature some of those stories here..
The Missing, from a Chinese Mother
written by Yangjin, April 15, 2023
Yangjin, a volunteer from Yangzhou, Jiangsu, has worked together for several years with one of our ICSA members. Through events in his life, he has found a passion for helping adoptees and birth families reunite. He wrote this article about a family he is helping and asked us to share it with adoptees.
Two days ago, I met a mother in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, who was searching for her daughter on the internet. She told me by phone and WeChat that she misses her daughter every day since her baby left her.
Her daughter was born on August 6, 1995 (Chinese calendar), September 30, 1995 (solar calendar) and the baby was the second child. She secretly gave birth to her second daughter in Yangzhong XinBa village. Knowing that this was not allowed with the family planning policy, she looked for adopters through intermediaries, who could arrange for a family with good conditions and no other baby in the family. At that time, her family will face very big fine and the mother nor her family have enough money. Although the mother does not want to send her baby, she has no other choice, she thinks she can visit her daughter in future, and also hopes the child's life is better. About a month after birth (Oct 30, 1995), the intermediary took the baby away.
About five years later (2000), the mother missed her daughter so much that she found the adoptive family through the intermediary. In fact, the adoptive mother was blind and her son was also blind, so the adoptive mother wanted to raise a healthy child. When the birth mother arrived at the family that day, the adoptive mother held the mother in her arms and cried to say the family planning staff in the village found out that her family did not meet the requirements for adoption. The child stayed this family for about one month (around Nov 30, 1995) and the baby was taken and was sent to Zhenjiang (Jiangsu) Welfare Institution. According to the adoptive mother, she tried to get the baby back to birth mother through intermediary, but the adoptive mother couldn't contact the birth family. When the child was six months old (about in Mar-April 1996), the adoptive father went to the welfare to see the child. At that time, the welfare said that the child's photo had been sent abroad. When the adoptive father went to the welfare to see the child for the second time, he was told that the child had been adopted. In 2000, when birth mother first knew that her child had been sent to a welfare institution, she went to search for the child. The staff of the welfare refused to disclose any information. The mother saw there was only three other disabled children in the welfare home and realized her baby was not there. Since then, the search for the child clue has been interrupted, but the birth mother hasn’t stopped missing her child even for a moment. She is often in tears in the dead of night, often dreams, dreams about her daughter still stay in the baby period, sleeping by her side, when she wakes up, she finds she was so silly, her daughter has grown up.
In Chinese culture, abandoning a child is considered lose face and a public search for a child requires a lot of pressure and courage, but the mother said: “I am sorry for not protecting my child, and my face is nothing compared with my guilt for my child. I do not ask for forgiveness from my child, nor do I need any return from my child. Only when I know my baby is healthy and safe, my heart can be at peace.”
The mother also says: “Another reason to search for my child: I'm afraid my child will grow up not knowing her history and want to search her birth family and not be able to find her way home, so I need to bravely stand up. I'm going to put my DNA data into all database I know (which is a very difficult road), and I'm going to put my daughter's search information on the Internet, like a lamp, which will light my daughter's way home when my daughter wants to come home. There is her mother for her to prepare the light for her to lead the way, in the daughter's search for birth family in the dark tunnel is no longer afraid, the door of the home is always open for her daughter.”
This volunteer wants to tell the adoptees: You are not abandoned, no, not at all. It is a mistake, in a particular period of history and a particular policy. Your birth parents miss you so much, so much. As a volunteer I want to build bridges – across time, across space, across color and religion – to help birth family, adoptee, adopter family exchange.
--Yangjin, 2023-4-15
Note: This baby may have been adopted from Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Nanjing, etc.
***DNA is in GEDmatch.com
一位母亲的思念
杨瑾-写于2023年4月15日
前二天，我在网上遇到一位苦苦寻找自己女儿的江苏镇江母亲，她分别用电话和微信告诉我，从女儿离开自己那刻起，无时不在思念自己的女儿。
她女儿是在1995年8月6日出生（农历），1995年9月30日（阳历），是第二胎，就在外地扬中新坝村偷偷地生下这第二个女儿，知道这是不符合计划生育政策，通过中间人寻找收养人，中间人可以安排给一户条件比较好，家里没有生育得人家，当时考虑到这个孩子是超生，要罚很多款，家里又没有钱，当时想送走孩子，以后可以看她，也希望孩子生活的好点，大约出生后一个月（1995年10月30日左右），中间人把孩子抱走。
大约五年后（2000年），这位母亲想女儿心切，通过中间人找到这户收养人家，这户人家其实并不是中间人所说的那样，实际情况养母是个盲人，生的儿子也是个盲人，所以才想抱养一个健康孩子，那天到达那户人家时，这户人家女主人就抱着这位母亲哭着告诉她，女儿在她家很乖，养得也非常健康，他们也非常喜欢这个孩子，可惜被当时村里(永新村)计划生育人员发现，说他家不符合收养条件，孩子在他家待了大约一个月（1995年11月30日左右 ），被强制抢走送到镇江丁卯福利院，据女主人说，本来想把孩子通过中间人还给他们，可是当时联系不上他家。这家男主人大约孩子六个月大（1996年3-4月 ）还去了福利院看了孩子，当时听福利院说孩子照片给国外了，当男主人第二次到福利院看孩子时，被告知孩子被人家收养了。2000年这位母亲第一次知道孩子被送到福利院后，就去福利院寻找孩子，福利院工作人员拒绝透露任何信息，只看到还有三个残疾孩子在福利院。从此寻找孩子的信息断了，但作为生母，对孩子的思念一刻多没有断过。她常常在夜深人静时流泪，常常做梦，梦见女儿还停留在婴儿时期，睡在自己身边，梦醒时发现自己很傻，想想女儿已经长大。
在中国文化里，送走孩子是件不光彩的事，而公开寻找孩子更需要面对很多非议的压力，但这位母亲说：我没有保护好自己的孩子，我已很对不起孩子，和对孩子的愧疚相比我的脸面微不足道，我不祈求孩子的原谅，我更不需要孩子的任何回报和亲情回馈，我只希望看到孩子健康和平安，我的内心才能平静下来。
另一个寻找孩子的原因：我怕孩子长大后，知道自己的历史后寻找原生家庭时，而找不到回家的路，所以我要站起来，我要把我的DNA数据放到数据库（这条路异常艰难），把寻找女儿的信息公开在网上，就像灯一样，可以照亮我女儿回家的路，只要我女儿想到回家时，有妈妈时刻为她准备的灯光为她引路，在女儿寻亲的黑暗隧道里不再害怕，家里的大门时刻为女儿敞开。
志愿者想告诉被收养者：你们不是被遗弃的，不，绝对不是的，它是特殊历史时期，特殊环境下的产物。你们的亲生父母非常想念你们，非常想念。我作为志愿者，建立桥梁--跨越时间，跨越空间，跨越肤色宗教，来帮助你们沟通。
--杨瑾-写于2023年4月15日