My Grandmother's Daughter

An adopted man reckons with family secrets, a father's distance, and the slow unraveling of a family held together by silence and pretense

I'm grateful to be able to share Jeannie Ewing's writing again with you today. She exudes

A daughter reckons with childhood abuse, a mother's belated apology, and what it takes to rebuild trust across thirty years of silence.

The common narrative is that when you give birth, you fall in love with your baby at once. In reality, this is a stranger you have to get to know, just like any other person. Sometimes, it’s love at first sight. Other times, it’s not.

My therapist says I have a severe case of catastrophic thinking. Well, I could have told you that. At any minor setback, my brain somehow determines it’s the literal end of the world, and I start jumping through the mental hoops of how I’m going to cope with it.

On that day, we saw the number, and the number became a person, and I realised: she is one of the 153 million orphans.