I Was 3 When I Watched My Father Kill My Mother And Himself. Years Later, I Uncovered The Truth.

At three and a half, she witnessed her Iraqi birth father kill her Bulgarian birth mother and himself, with news coverage attributing the crime to his Muslim identity. Unresolved grief, international adoption, and white American upbringing delayed coherent cultural identity formation until she was able to question her past. Childhood supports included an American adoption-specialist therapist until age fifteen and visits to a local Turkish Muslim hairdresser arranged by her adoptive mother. Physical appearance differences and loss of the Bulgarian language complicated national belonging. Adoptive parents' colorblind approach left much about her Iraqi heritage and her father's motives unexamined, while Bulgarian contacts framed the divorce as provoking retaliation.

When I was 3 and a half and still living in the country of my birth, Bulgaria, I watched as my birth father, an Iraqi immigrant, killed my birth mother, a Bulgarian national, and then himself in a crime of passion characterized as a result of his Muslim identity by the news outlet that covered their deaths. Due to unresolved grief, the international adoption and white American upbringing that followed, I did not begin to form

Growing up, the scaffolding of my identity was built according to what I had access to at the time. That included seeing a very good childhood therapist, who was American and specialized in adoption, until I was 15, and the local Turkish Muslim hairdresser my blonde, blue-eyed mother brought me to twice around the same time - once on accident, then once on purpose.

What little I knew of my national origin was complicated by the fact that I didn't look Bulgarian. After three months in the United States, I no longer spoke the language, either. The birth mother with whom I had shared an inseparable bond was a beautiful Bulgarian woman with model-grade looks, billowy hair,, and a fair complexion. In comparison, I had dark eyebrows and thick tufts of curly hair and warm-colored baby skin, which, over time, became sand-toned - like my birth father's.

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