When I was 15 months old, my Argentinian mother in Lower Manhattan struggled with severe mental illness and sought help, believing she was entering a city-run child welfare center. She instead entered a private adoption agency and unintentionally signed away her parental rights, placing me in foster care. My father could not continue the marriage, and I did not see my mother for 30 years or my father for over 40 years. I lived in a Long Island foster home, was promised a move to Buenos Aires that was canceled, and was adopted at age seven. Loving adoptive homes did not erase grief, identity loss, and trauma, leading me to become a psychotherapist to help foster and adopted youth heal.
When I was just 15 months old, my mother, an Argentinian immigrant living in Lower Manhattan, was struggling with severe mental health challenges and the crushing weight of raising a child in a foreign country. In her desperation, she sought help. She believed she was walking into a city-run child welfare center where she could temporarily place me in safe hands until she got the support she needed.
My father had been out of town, and when he returned a few days later, the depths of my mother's mental illness, the language barrier, and what she had done made it nearly impossible for him to move forward with the marriage. The spell of romantic chemistry had faded, and the reality of having to raise not just one, but two children (my mother was also pregnant at the time) was too much.
From that moment, my life was shaped by foster care, adoption policy, caseworkers, and courtrooms. I was sent to live with a foster family in Long Island, New York. At age 6, I was told I would go live with relatives in Buenos Aires and was given a passport. A year later, I was told that wasn't happening, and I remained in my foster home. At age 7, I was adopted by a family just one town over.
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