For as long as I can remember, I lived under one repeated message: I was adopted, and I should be grateful for it. Those were the words my adoptive mother, Margaret, used to shape my identity and my place in the world. At 25, when I visited the orphanage where I believed my life began, everything changed. The clerk looked at me and calmly said there had never been a child with my name registered there. In that moment, the story I had always trusted crumbled. Growing up, my home never felt warm. Margaret treated motherhood like a duty rather...
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