I honestly can’t remember when I was first told I was adopted. It feels like I’ve always known. It was just something openly talked about in my family, so it must have been from a very young age. I was signed over as a ward of the state of Georgia right after birth, and at just two days old I was placed with a foster family. They nicknamed me Tammy, a name they still use even now.
I stayed with them until I was almost three months old. While they were away on vacation, I was adopted. I’ve never really understood the whole situation, but we stayed in touch with my foster parents. Every summer until I was about twelve, we would visit them. They had school and sports pictures of me covering their walls, like I had grown up in that house. It always unsettled me, like I was living two different lives.
I grew up in Carrollton, Georgia, in a split-level house with a big yard. It was the classic suburban picture with a mom, dad, two kids, even a dog. I also had an older brother who had been adopted too. Both my parents came from big families. My dad was one of thirteen, and my mom one of seven.Relatives were constantly present, and I always felt assured of my parents’ affection.
My father pampered me and made me feel like royalty.
I honestly can’t remember him ever telling me no. He worked nights, so I didn’t see him as much. My mom was the one who laid down the rules. She worked for DFCS, which meant she was often on call.
Even with all the love around me, I remember feeling lonely from as early as four or five. Especially at family gatherings. People would say simple, innocent things, like telling my cousin she looked just like her mom, and it would make me want to cry. I wanted someone to say that about me, to say I looked like I belonged.
At gatherings I’d stick close to my parents for as long as I could. I was nervous around people and would start talking too much when I got anxious. Our old neighbor even admitted years later that she sometimes went inside when she saw me coming because I would just talk and talk. My brother was the opposite. He made friends everywhere we went.
When I was in my early teens, I grew a strong anxiety about being abandoned.
If my mom was just a few minutes late picking me up, I would panic and imagine the worst, like she had been in a car accident and I had lost her forever.
My brother got into trouble a lot growing up, and it embarrassed my parents, especially my mom. I reacted by trying to be perfect. I was scared that if I messed up, they would return me. I had seen TV shows where adopted kids were sent back for being bad, and I couldn’t get that out of my head. I begged my brother to behave, but of course, he didn’t always.
At eleven, I found my adoption file while rambling around the house one day. It was a thick manila folder with a lot of blacked-out sections. In it, I saw something that changed me forever. I had biological sisters. Their birthdates were listed, and I memorized them instantly. For a while I convinced myself maybe they were adopted too.
Eventually, I worked up the courage to ask my mom about them. We were riding home from church when I asked if she knew where my sisters were. She told me something I’ll never forget. “Your parents were together and already raising two daughters. They weren’t given up they stayed with them.”
I sat there frozen, my whole world flipped upside down. My parents had kept my sisters, but not me. I carried that hurt for years, and honestly, I’ve never been the same since.
Even after high school and a couple years of college, the emptiness was still there. At twenty, I thought maybe having my own child would finally give me that sense of belonging. I left college after becoming pregnant, and at twenty-one I welcomed my first son into the world. Holding him for the first time was the most unforgettable experience of my life, and for the first time I felt a true bond through blood.
I went on to have another son and eventually met my soulmate, but the deep feelings of not being good enough didn’t just disappear. During a fight with my husband one day, I shouted, “I could never expect you to love me. My own mother didn’t love me.”
