23 days

I had an interesting interview last Friday for the upcoming Dutch book 'Children of their time' in which 17 Indonesian adoptees are being portrait in their experience of adoption. I had taken a short break on the absurdity of my own case and it felt strange to dive back in. What felt once like an obsession to find the truth, slowly became less important.

When I started my second search in June 2020, it used to keep me up at night. On the one hand to chat to Indonesian in a different time zone willing to help and on the other hand to solve the puzzle which had been in my head for decades. The only time I was available was in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. During the day I was supposed to care about issues which often sounded insignificant to me. (What could be more important than trying to find my mother or myself?) I learned the hard way, during depression, if you are not able to financially take care of yourself, you are basically fucked. I had to disconnect myself during the day cause I needed a paycheck to support myself and often hated the organizations I worked for with their false pretense to make the world a better place. My world had always been a lot darker and in the early morn' around 03:00 o'clock my brain started to work and analyse, trying to put memories, research data and facts together. Creating a chronological time-line of my pre-adoption years was important to understand what had happened. For years I believed myself to be crazy only to find a little too late that most of my memories are quite accurate. As a little girl, I never understood why I had been adopted, I still don't. I always felt my mother took good care of me, I was well fed and felt loved. There was indeed a (small) part living on the street, but I remember my mum often had a job and I always thought that it was a temporary thing.

When I studied my adoption papers once more I discover that my mother supposedly signed a waiver on the 21st July 1979, giving up all her rights as a mother. While on the 13th of August 1979 the Indonesian court accepted the waiver and my adoption to foreign parents. To put it into context if you compare it with a national adoption: a Dutch decree in 1976-1977 (14167, page 12, 2nd paragraph) states: it is considered desirable that a signed waiver of the biological parents should not immediately be definitive. A reflection period of at least three and a maximum of six months should be provided.

Explain to me how absurd it is that in my case barely after 23 days have passed when my mother supposedly signed a waiver, I get stripped of my nationality by the Indonesian court, given to Dutch parents for adoption and within 5 weeks taken to the Netherlands a.k.a. the other side of the world? Apparently this was not only acceptable for the Indonesian government but also for the Dutch. How come the waiver regulations for national adoption was different from international?

Adoption within 23 days was only one of the absurdities that my personal adoption file contains and I am sad to say there are many more. Including the mystery of which part of Indonesia I truly come from. My story stretches from Pasuruan (near Surabaya) to Jogjakarta, Jakarta and the Lampung, Sumatra. I used to think I was crazy to have detailed memories from all over the country, but researched showed that I am definitely not crazy.

These days I am in a better state of mind but I often get the question. Did you ever seek professional support to help with your ordeals. I did, but never found the help I needed: confirmation of the things I remember actually happened and reasonable doubts if my adoption was legitimate. Frankly, I was probably not even able to afford help, since during my days of depression I was completely broke and did not have health insurance.

Most people don't think of the time, energy and finances you have to spend in trying to find who you are as an adoptee, your background, heritage and biological family which is your right. We constantly have to flip the bill ourselves. We are victims of a situation we never created but we are left picking up the pieces to restore our identity. Unfortunately, this often means paying the bills for therapy and roots travel ourselves. In my case no therapist was able to help me. It was the help of my friend Tazia and BBC Indonesia who gave me more ease of mind to get on with my life. But l'll always leave the door a little bit open for new information....