I haven’t written about it much here, so you may not know that I was adopted as an infant. I’m usually surprised when I find out that someone in my life doesn’t know this about me, because it’s a pretty damn big part of my identity.

For 30 years now, I’ve known I was adopted, and my feelings about that fact as well as the importance I’ve placed on it have varied quite a bit throughout my life. At times, I’ve thought and talked about it a lot, and at other times, I’ve treated it like it was no big deal. But I’m beginning to realize, with the help of a therapist, just how big of a deal it really is.

I am still and probably will forever be processing aspects of my story. I’ve written about searching for and finding my biological family, but I’ve never published those writings. They never seemed quite right to me, almost as if there was some big piece of the picture that I was missing. Adoption is a complex scenario that involves many people with different interests who are affected by it in different ways. Wrapping it up into a neat package is difficult and unsatisfying, but it’s what so many people try to do.

As I reflect on the birth of my son a year ago and how my relationship with him has developed, I can’t help but think about my own entry into this world. I don’t remember it, obviously. I know the date of my birth and the hospital where it took place, but I have no other information about my first few days on this earth. Until very recently, I’d never thought about it.

I know that on my third day, my adoptive parents arrived at a lawyer’s office and were handed a baby — me. I was passed from stranger to stranger and eventually to the people who would raise me. After years of infertility struggles, they were thrilled, of course. I suspect they didn’t think much about the life I’d already lived at that point. To them, it probably felt as though God had dropped me from heaven into their arms.

My adoption situation is seen by many as ideal. Separated from my biological mother just after birth and transferred to my new family at only a few days old, I would have no memory of the family I left behind, no attachment to them, which would lessen the likelihood of behavioral problems and emotional difficulties. I would have no contact with my birth mother, and my adoptive family would know nothing about her. The court records would be sealed. My birth certificate would list my adoptive parents as my parents, with no mention of anyone else. This would be a clean break, and I would be a clean slate.

Except that humans don’t work that way. Only very recently have I come to acknowledge that adoption is traumatic for a child, and the fact that the child has no memory of the experience doesn’t erase the trauma. This seems obvious to me now, but I had overlooked it and perhaps avoided it my whole life, as had everyone around me.

Babies bond with their mothers in the womb. A baby hears her mother’s voice constantly for months, and she comes to be soothed by that voice. She relies on her mother for nourishment and eats what her mother eats. She feels the effects of her mother’s emotions and the rhythm of her heart beat. Immediately after being born, a baby hears her mother’s voice again, smells familiar smells, and ideally feels her mother’s heartbeat again, confirming her senses and reassuring her that this strange new place is still a little familiar and safe. Within the first few days of her life, a baby is already attached to her mother.

And then that attachment is severed, suddenly. I imagine that after being born, I was not placed on my mother’s chest, but was instead whisked away to a nursery. For 72 hours, I likely lay in a crib and was visited by a rotating staff of nurses. They fed me bottles, changed my diapers, and bathed me, but they were not my mother. Their voices, smells, and rhythms were different. Perhaps they tried to give me a healthy dose of human contact, but if I began to bond with them, that bond, too, would be severed in short time.

Three days may seem like an insignificant blip in the span of a lifetime, but the first few days of a baby’s life set the stage for her development, for the way she sees the world. The trauma of being separated from her mother becomes imprinted in the child’s subconscious. Some psychologists and adoption experts refer to this trauma as the Primal Wound. As the baby develops through childhood and becomes an adult, she may not recognize this wound, but it is there nonetheless, and it unquestionably affects her.

And so that experience has affected me, in ways I am only beginning to understand. I’ve decided to write about this process of uncovering and unpacking my origin story. Doing so will require me to get vulnerable, and I hope that you’ll respect my vulnerability and respond gently as you read. I’m doing this for myself, but also for other adoptees who may not yet have considered some of the ways in which their experiences have shaped them. I’m doing this because I think the larger conversation about adoption and surrogacy is incomplete and fails to recognize the complex ways in which adoption impacts the child.

Adopted families are expected to be extra grateful. An adopted child is a blessing for parents who could not bear biologically related children. The child is lucky to have a loving family who wants her, to have been saved from orphanhood or a resource-poor upbringing. She should be thankful that her mother chose to bring her into this world rather than opting for an abortion (yes, I have actually heard that).

This narrative does a great disservice to everyone involved. Through this series, I hope to give voice to the unspoken aspects of adoption. My intention is not to discourage adoption or surrogacy or to blame anyone for my own circumstances, as I believe both of my families have always done what they thought was best. But I hope that after reading these essays, families considering or affected by adoption will view it more mindfully and make room in their hearts and lives for how complicated of a journey it is for all involved. I hope that they will leave space for some grieving and healing alongside the warranted gratitude.

Thanks for letting me share my journey with you. Please pass this post along to anyone else whom you think it may help. I invite anyone affected by adoption to share their own experiences in the comments.