When TikToker Emilio (@emilio.vignoni1) was a kid, she was adopted by a very sweet and loving couple who didn’t have any other children. They never talked about the fact that she was adopted, but she had her suspicions over the years.
“In their defense, I’m certain that they just never wanted me to feel like I didn’t belong to them,” said Emilio. “In retrospect, was that the smartest move? No. But I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they had good intentions.”
After her father died when she was 29, she thought that she and her mother would be able to open up and talk about deeper topics like adoption, but they never did. She ended up passing away six years later, when Emilio turned 36.
While she was clearing out her parents’ house, she tried searching for her adoption papers, but there was no sign of them anywhere. To her, it was very odd because her parents were the type of people to keep everything.
About a year later, her mom’s sister texted her. She sent a picture of a package from her mom and asked if she wanted it. Emilio said yes, thinking it was just another box of family photos.
But when the package arrived, she opened it and found her adoption papers, a long, handwritten letter from her birth mother, and 13 years of birthday cards and Christmas cards.
“I was stunned,” she said. “It was such a crazy mix of emotions. My heart was racing. I ended up having panic attacks for the rest of the night. But I was relieved that I finally found these adoption papers.”
The letter from her birth mother explained the whole story of why she gave Emilio up for adoption. There was even a baby book that she had sent her for her first birthday.
She felt weird that her adoptive parents had kept all this from her for so long.
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The state she lives in has closed-adoption laws, so there was no identifying information in anything that her birth mother had sent. But in the last letter she sent, she described the man she had married and their two kids, a son and a daughter.
After doing some research and DNA tests, Emilio managed to find her birth mom. She was also able to message her biological cousin on her birth dad’s side of the family. The cousin sent a bunch of photos of her father and his two kids.
Overall, it was definitely a profound experience and a deeply personal journey. Ultimately, she thinks that her adoptive parents’ attempt to protect her from emotional harm caused a void between them.
“I knew I was adopted, and it was always the elephant in the room,” Emilio wrote in a comment. “Probably the reason I developed anxiety as a child.”
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
