“What happened was a long time ago, Natalie. You’re the one who won’t let go of the past.”How I wish I could. Just let the past go. Be free, live in the here and now. My whole life—what now amounts to thirty years of therapy, thirty years of meditating, and seventeen in the twelve-step program—has been about trying to accept and let go. I can’t control the world, but I can take responsibility for my actions, for seeking help. The message has always been the same: Accept, feel, let go, and be grateful. Accept, feel, let go, be grateful. Become aware, act accordingly, give myself love, value myself, ignore the voices in my head that keep repeating the message of worthlessness. That message that breathes through every pore of my being. Before I even realize it, it’s there, whispering in my ear, offering explanations for why people around me behave the way they do. Always confirming the underlying belief. Blinding me to the complex, nuanced reality.Of course I know all this, so even feeling pain or anger makes me ashamed.
How do I know if what I feel and perceive is real, or if it’s trauma?
Where is my truth?
What is real?
And again: Why can’t I let go of this identity?Very recently, thankfully, I was finally able to attend a group therapy session for adoptees, organized by the same institution that provides free therapy to all adopted people, in Swedish: adopterad.com.For many years, I had been trying to find other adoptees and talk about the issues that affect only us. In fact, back in 2017, during one of my lowest points in depression, I decided to seek psychiatric help—even though I was already seeing a psychologist. I felt like I couldn’t go on anymore, so I had an interview with a psychiatrist who was supposed to refer me to another psychiatrist, where I assume I would get medication.This psychiatrist interviewed me for an hour. He asked me all kinds of questions, including what kind of help I was looking for. I told him directly: I would love to go to group therapy with other adoptees. He looked at me, puzzled:
“Why?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “I have a lot of experience with twelve-step groups, and I know how helpful it is to hear other people’s stories.”
“But why?” he asked again, “that will only make you identify even more as a victim. In fact, people with trauma like you become very egocentric because of the pain trauma causes.”
“Yes, I know that,” I replied. “That’s why I already go to twelve-step meetings for adult children of dysfunctional families, precisely to break out of that egocentrism and listen to others’ experiences.”The psychiatrist looked frustrated, irritated. I was calm, not backing down.
“And what do you think is going to change by finding your biological identity? Nothing will change!” he insisted.
Then I, again very patiently, said: “I understand that for someone who isn’t adopted, it’s hard to understand.”
To which he replied: “I am adopted, and I have no need to find my biological identity.”I looked at him, paused for a moment, and said:
“Well, if you don’t feel that need, I understand why you can’t empathize with mine.”
That answer, of course, irritated him even more. He tried to convince me that all I needed was therapy to repair my attachment pattern and said that the psychologist I was seeing wasn’t doing a good job.I’d like to add a small detail here: that psychologist was Martha Cullberg, one of the most prominent psychologists in Sweden, who has written multiple books. It became painfully clear how ignorant society is about this topic—and this person in particular. Not even this psychiatrist, who was adopted himself, could understand the level of trauma he was dealing with.Of course, not everyone needs to know their biological origin—but let’s just say it’s not that hard to understand that someone who doesn’t know might want to know.So, in the spring of this year, 2025, when I was finally able to join a group and meet other adoptees, I thanked the heavens and every saint from every religion and belief system, because at last, I could begin to understand myself a little more—through the stories of others. And just as I had imagined, reflected in each person’s story, I could see an immeasurable pain. And not only that—I could hear the same questions I carry within me:
Why does this hurt so much? What has been happening to me? How can I change it?
No one reacts like I do, no one feels the way I feel...I cried through the entire first session. And not from pain—but from gratitude.
We were a group of strangers, adoptees from different countries, of different ages—but so alike.Accept, feel, let go, be grateful.In this search to accept myself, to understand what’s happening to me, to forgive myself—in 2018, the last time I went to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo with Simón—I asked for an interview with someone who could explain more to me about Argentina’s adoption laws. Because let’s not forget: we are never detached from the history that precedes us.This person explained the history of adoption law in Argentina. The law was officially enacted in 1948, granting adoptive children the same rights as biological heirs. So then, before legal adoption existed—what was there?From what I understood, there were “child circulation practices”, referring to those transactions in which the responsibility for a child was transferred from one adult to another. In Argentina, such practices have a long tradition, and various sources indicate that despite the lack of legal regulation, throughout the 19th century and much of the 20th, adoptions were carried out either by charitable organizations or informally between private individuals. These children weren’t “real” children—not biological ones—but at least they were given the right to inherit just like biological heirs.But what does that really mean?
What is the stigma carried by being adopted? Or more precisely—what did I feel, when the people around me found out that I was adopted?
What did my little girl mind perceive?The first word that comes to mind is: illegitimacy.
Not truly being.
Not truly belonging.
Not truly deserving.In June 2002, I moved to Sweden.
Far from Argentina—and although it could have been even farther or more different from Argentina—it truly felt like arriving on another planet. Not long after arriving, I realized the hardest part was finding myself. In Argentina, I had my role, my identity, my place. I was playing a character that expressed itself in a society which, in turn, reflected back what it saw in me. I saw myself in a certain way, and society reflected back the image I projected to the world around me.Now, in this new world, the reflection I received of myself was completely different. I became another character—one I didn’t identify with. I couldn’t find myself. I didn’t recognize myself. And I didn’t understand what this new society was telling me about who I was.Now, twenty-three years later, I’ve developed a character and an identity rooted in the reality that surrounds me. Basically, I’ve become Swedish. I’m still a fish out of water—but for different reasons than I was in Argentina. I’m a fish out of water because, quite literally, I come from a different stream.What I mean with all of this is that we, as people, are never separate from the reality around us, nor are we immune to the message society reflects back to us about who we are. I always say it:
We are fish in the current, birds in the wind, trying to find our path, our story, which lives within a historical context shaped by invisible forces beyond our conscious efforts to break free from them.As I mentioned before, adoptees—or people with substituted identities—are surrounded by messages about why we didn’t grow up with our biological parents, from the very day we are born. Daily messages, from early on, like mantras repeated consciously or unconsciously everywhere we look. Mantras we hear and repeat to ourselves endlessly—about illegitimacy, unworthiness, and more. Silent mantras, etched into the retinas of our eyes, filtering everything through that lens and echoing the same message into eternity. Without even realizing it.“Do you think you would have been different if you’d grown up with your biological family?” people have asked me many times.
“I don’t know. I’ve never not been adopted. This is all I know.”The number one cliché I always heard—and denied for most of my life—was that my low self-esteem came from the fact that my biological mother abandoned me. That meant I identified as abandonable. According to this cliché, I felt like I didn’t have the same value as a baby who grew up with their biological family. Defective from the start.“That can’t be,” I’d think. “It can’t be that simple.”
Because if it were, why didn’t I instead identify as a deeply wanted baby? A baby so desired that my adoptive parents even broke the law to get me?
The mantra of “abandonment” was much louder than the mantra of “deeply wanted child.”
I internalized rejection and abandonment far more than the love and longing of my adoptive parents to have a daughter.How unfair.
How different things could’ve been if I had internalized the love instead!
What strength I would have now!But I’m just a fish swimming in the current of a given fate.The voices I internalized were those of my adoptive family, when they spoke about my genes; my schoolmates, who reminded me of the color of my skin; the teachers who treated me differently for not being blonde and white; my little first-grade boyfriend, also adopted, who told me we belonged together because we had the same skin tone. The voice of my mom’s friend who, referring to someone else planning to adopt, said: “How horrible! Who knows where those genes come from?”
Other voices—of people who, upon hearing that I was adopted—would practically say “Poor thing...”
The stares of the girls at the German sports camp who didn’t want to play with me because I looked different from them.The reflection society gave back—saying I was damaged from the start—spoke loud and clear, again and again.And me? Running, endlessly trying to disprove that message.
Desperately trying to get away from the internal radio broadcasting it all.But I know that deep inside me, when I manage to be still and quiet my mind, there are other voices.
Voices independent of external reality—voices that patiently and lovingly rebuild me into a more real, fair, and kind identity. Voices that come from a force beyond myself. Voices that want good for me.Sometimes I can’t sleep, thinking of what a waste all these years have been—how I haven’t been able to free myself from that internal prison.
If I had just fought harder, tried a bit more, pushed myself further…
And then I remind myself:“Naty, you’re just a fish in the current.
You’ve always done what you could.
You’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
And you are exactly who you’re meant to be.”Everything is perfect as it is.Accept, feel, let go, be grateful.And sometimes, I can even fall back asleep.

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