10/14/2026
I can still remember the first time I asked my mom why no one in our family looked like me.
She explained that some mommies have their babies, and some mommies choose their babies—and **she chose me.**
It brought me comfort. And I’m sure she answered the best way she knew how.
But her answer also brought more questions.
I didn’t have the language for identity then. I only knew what it felt like to look around and wonder why I seemed different—why the reflection looking back at me didn’t always seem to match the story I had been given.
For years, I accepted the answers I was given. But the questions never completely disappeared.
Years later, I would begin searching for where I came from, not realizing I was also searching for **myself**.
When I look at this little girl now, I see someone who was already wondering. Already noticing. Already searching in the only way she knew how.
She couldn’t have known that decades later, I would finally begin uncovering the answers she had been searching for all along.
Six days until I share her story—and mine.
