Begging for Love. An Adopted Child’s Recollections / “For Life” magazine, no. 2, Spring 2014
This is a testimonial of an formerly adopted child, A.S.P. from Bistrița-Năsăud, Romania:
There’s no man who doesn’t hide in his heart an impressive collection of guilty deeds, pain, suffering, sadness, failure and frustration, hopelessness and disappointment. All of us have hidden them well. Fear, guilt, shame of our thoughts and deeds are buried deep inside the closet, where we are sure not to see them anymore. Then life rushes on us and, without even realizing, we become grumpy and dissatisfied with our life, with the people around, with ourselves. You make one mistake after another until you wake up and you’re already old and alone. Isn’t it, my sweet mother?…
I was a chance child. I never knew my father. He doesn’t even know I exist. I’d like to meet him, maybe I have other brothers and sisters whose names I don’t know and can’t say in my prayers. I’m the fruit of love at first sight, of a fleeting affair, the fruit of sin.
I won’t ever understand why I was such a burden for my mother… For years I longed for her embrace. I don’t want to judge her. Maybe she had her reasons, more or less justified. May the Mother of God protect her and grant her wisdom and time for salvation. But her isolation and the fact that she still doesn’t accept me and my sister hurt me.
All her attempts to abort me were in vain. Neither bitter drinks, nor beatings could chase me away from the warm shelter of her belly. I was stubborn enough to survive, to be born, to be a fighter.
Two weeks together with me were too much for her. She left me – a bundle of diapers – in the street. Sweet dear Mother Ana, bent by time and adversities, raised me, cared for me, put an “angel in my soul” and taught me to take the first steps and utter my first words. A stranger and yet a MOTHER whose embrace I’ll never forget!
After I turned three, foster homes, with good or bad, gave me home, food, education – and also jungle-like shivers, pain, fears crowded in my childish soul. And unnatural hell of loneliness.
We were making up prayers in dark dormitories and the Mother of God caressed us in our dreams, soothed our physical and soul pain, wiped away our gushing tears that erupted in the middle of the night. Imagine a home where at night dozens of children are weeping! For years I was haunted by the sobs rising from the souls deserted by their parents.
In school they pointed fingers on us (they called us “the foster kids“), we were offended, derided, humiliated, torn apart by sharp words. We were outcasts… In our prayers we only asked for parents, not for toys. We begged for a smile. We were begging for love!
I was nine when I first learned how to smile. It was on the Feast of the Resurrection that. I met my future parents. George and Maria were simple people, modest, maybe even a bit severe, but this was good for me. They knew how to plant in me righteousness, humanity, responsibility, faith in God and especially love.
Adoption was made a few months later with the acceptance of my natural mother. I was hurt by the ease with which she gave me away as if I were an old dress, but I’ll never forget the joy and happiness my new parents were showing.
I give thanks to good God for everything He gave me, for the second chance of adoption, for my three mothers (the one who gave me life and the two who raised me), for a wonderful father. I lovingly carry his memory in my soul, now that he has moved to the Lord after a soul-saving fight with unforgiving cancer. I am closely surrounded by hundreds of children at school, where I teach.
God found me worthy of giving birth to four wonderful children – three boys and a girl – and of a loving husband. The joy of motherhood, the accomplishment of having a family cannot be compared with anything.
I live modestly, but I feel so much richer next to them!…
