I’m sitting in a little Kava Bar in Portland, Oregon right now. This place always feels like a soft landing warm lights, quiet chatter, familiar faces. I came here after dropping my first-born daughter and two of my grandbabies at the airport. I thought I’d be fine. I wasn’t. The tears came, right on cue. No one here judges. They just let you cry, and that’s exactly what I needed.
It’s wild to think back to 1986 the year my daughter came into my life. I was seventeen, lost, and living alone in a small, dingy studio apartment eleven blocks from my high school. My boyfriend, Brett, was sixteen. My dad had rented the place for me after his wife gave him an ultimatum: her or me. He chose her. “You’ll grow up, have your own family,” he said. “If I leave her to help you, I’ll grow old alone.” Those words burned. So there I was barely an adult, completely unmoored. No doorknob, no working lock, just a butter knife jammed in the doorframe to keep me safe at night.
My world back then was chaos cocaine, parties, sadness. I was floating, pretending not to notice that I hadn’t had a period in months. But you can only ignore the truth for so long. One day I walked into Planned Parenthood thinking I had an STD. They told me I had chlamydia then a second test revealed something else entirely. I didn’t have an infection. I had a baby growing inside me.
They sent me for an ultrasound. And when I saw that flicker that heartbeat everything in me shifted. It wasn’t fear anymore. It was love. A deep, aching kind of love I’d never felt before. The nurse looked at me gently and said, “You’re already five months along. Maybe… consider adoption. There’s a family out there praying for a baby like yours.” She told me what an abortion would really mean at that stage. After that, I knew. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t end her life.
When I told Brett, he panicked. “Don’t tell my mom,” he said. That was it. He was gone. I was alone.
My mom had serious mental health issues, and my dad’s addiction made him unreliable. I didn’t have anyone to lean on. When I finally told my dad, his first words were, “Is it a boy? If it is, I’ll take care of it.” I knew she was a girl. And I knew I was on my own.
I stopped going to school. I couldn’t face the stares, the whispers. I failed my last semester just 1.5 credits short of graduating. Then my lease ran out, and my dad told me he wouldn’t pay for another month. I was terrified. I called my mother the same woman who once said she’d kill me and herself if my dad didn’t take me away and asked for help. I hated that I had to. But she said I could come live with her.
She couldn’t tell me what to do, she said. But she did remind me of every reason why I’d fail as a mother. And deep down, I believed her. I didn’t think I was enough for anyone, especially a baby.
My mom was dating a pastor then. Before I knew it, she’d made an appointment with a lawyer and an adoption agency. I didn’t even feel like I was part of the decision it was just happening. I told myself I was doing the right thing. That she deserved better. That this was love.
When it came time to choose a family, I looked through dozens of profiles until I saw them. The couple who would become her parents. I knew right away. They looked kind. They looked ready.
The day I gave birth, I told the nurses not to let me hold her until the papers were signed. I thought it would make it easier. But I still named her Jessica Ambrée. “Sweet nectar of the gods.” I added the accent on the “e,” just like in my own name, so maybe someday, if she ever looked for me, she’d have that tiny clue that we were connected.
They let me stay three days in the hospital. Three days of firsts. Her first cry. Her first bath. Her first bottle. And then… the last time I would ever hold her. When the woman from the agency came to take her, I couldn’t let go. I clung to her until my arms went numb. Then she was gone. The room felt hollow. I pressed my back to the wall and just sobbed until there was nothing left.
Going home with empty arms and milk-filled breasts is a pain you can’t explain. It’s a silence that screams.
After that, I spiraled. My mom called me names. I went back to using. I married a man who mirrored every broken thing I grew up with abusive, addicted, absent. I had six more children. There was homelessness, jail, heartbreak. But eventually there was recovery. There was healing.
Fast forward to 2007. I was living in South Florida. Every July, around Jessica’s birthday, the depression came like clockwork. One night, sitting under a full moon, I felt this pull. Something in me said, go look for her. So I did. I found a free adoption registry online and typed in my info. Only one result popped up. I clicked it and there she was. Her words. Her description of me. She was seventeen. She had been looking for me.
I woke my partner and said, “I think I just found my daughter.” He said, “If you were her, would you care what time your mother called?” It was 2 a.m. I picked up the phone and dialed the number listed. It rang and rang. Then voicemail. I left a message. Later, I learned she was standing in the kitchen with her adoptive mom when she heard it. They both cried.
We found each other on MySpace (remember MySpace?) and started talking. Just like that, she was back in my life. I also reached out to Brett. He sent me a letter of amends something I didn’t know I needed until it arrived.
Years passed, and our bond grew. When she lost her second baby in 2012, I flew across the country to hold her. It had been twenty-five years since I’d held her last. We cried, we grieved, we healed. Meeting her adoptive mom face to face was overwhelming I hugged her and just said “thank you” over and over. There are no words big enough for that kind of gratitude.
We kept in touch through messages and phone calls. But I always felt that ache that longing to be with her. To see her face in person. To hold her babies. Then, for her 34th birthday, her sisters and I surprised her with tickets to come home to Oregon. The weeks leading up to her visit, I was a bundle of nerves. Will she like me? Am I too much? What if she doesn’t like the way I talk?
When she finally walked through those airport doors, time folded in on itself. The 17-year-old in me the one who said goodbye in that hospital she exhaled for the first time in decades.
We spent that week together surrounded by family, nature, laughter, tears. She met her birth father, her siblings, nieces, nephews all of us orbiting around this reunion that felt sacred. One day, we drove up to Mount Hood. I reached over and held her hand. Our fingers fit together so perfectly that it unlocked a memory. I told her about the promise I made to her when she was three days old:
“I promise I’ll make this worth it. I’ll finish school. I’ll live my dreams. I’ll become the woman you can be proud of.”
And I did. I went back to school. I graduated. I got sober. I built a business. I found peace. I became the woman I told her I would be.
A few days after she went back home, I got a text from her that said, “Just wanted to say I LOVE YOU!!! And I’m SO incredibly proud of you and who you are.”
That was it. That was the full circle.
She isn’t missing from me anymore.
Home isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s a person and my baby, my first-born, my heart is finally home.
