Letter from the Outside Daughter

By K E Garland 

To my birth father’s family, 
 
I know I don’t belong. You don’t have to go out of your way to position me as an outsider. I’ve lived on the edges of society’s acceptance since conception. 
 
Fleeing an abusive husband, my mother found herself pregnant with a stranger’s child. For nine months, she silently wept for succumbing to her desires. She whispered self-deprecating statements audible to only herself and me, while the person who impregnated her quietly disappeared.  
 
If her faux pas was made public, the state would name her husband as my father. The government could do that—assign one man’s responsibility to another—and then we’d be stuck. Instead, she hid and fed me morsels of shame in the tight space of her womb. I devoured her fears and learned to hold secrets in my belly, until I ached with regret. 
 
So, the demonstrative way you ignore me is unnecessary. I began life not belonging. ​

---

You don’t have to pretend to like me. Feigning affection is hard. Trust me. I know it is no easy feat. A year after I was born, a kind woman, who wanted to give a baby “the same wonderful childhood she’d had,” and a man, who seemed to have gone along with the whimsy of his wife, adopted me. Like a round peg in a square hole, I didn’t fit: my lighter complexion contrasted against my adoptive father’s darker tone; my extroversion bounced against my adoptive mother’s ladylike nature. Play acting to fit in became life’s daily chore.
​ 
But it didn’t work. 
 
My adoptive mother suspected I was “biding my time.” She’d mentioned it to my adoptive father after I learned they weren’t my biological parents. He repeated her suspicions often, well after she died. Years later, I gained full understanding of the phrase. That she would imply my pre-teen self was strategically waiting until the perfect moment to act upon deeper desires sounded cold and calculating. In hindsight, she was right. I stomached my circumstances because there was no recourse. There was no alternative family to which I could return, especially not yours.  
 
So, your pretense isn’t required. I’ve never belonged. 
 
You don’t have to avert your gaze. Your strategy makes sense, though. Sometimes, it is easier to enact avoidance than to face the obvious straight away. It takes less effort to bury events deep in the crevices of one’s mind, to act as if reality isn’t real, to replace facts with make-believe. However, fairy tales are for children. Adulthood showed me how to accept the truth and to confront what is before me. That’s why when we are together, I stare. 
 
I see my eyes in my father’s and my nose on his face. I watch him gobble foods and hear him reflect on his favorite libations. It brings me peace, and I cannot look away. I listen to my and my sister’s voice, similar in cadence and tone. Our words waltz in the wind, light and airy, like old friends. It is comforting. This is my reality: I didn’t have a lifetime to take commonalities for granted. I missed the privilege of presuming genetic markers existed, and now, I can revel in them, even if it is in the quiet of my mind.  
 
It seems you have a different reality: the effects of biology have triggered your pain and discomfort. So, I ignore my own advice, temper my speech, and tamp down my personality when you are near. I tolerate your avoidance and accept that blood relation doesn’t equal total understanding or belonging. 
 
But where does this leave us?  
 
The shock of my existence seems to have overridden your ability to empathize with my lived experience. And I’ve tried to do what you cannot seem to—conjure compassion. I can’t imagine learning that my husband had fathered a child the same age as one of our daughters. I can’t fathom meeting a sibling who looked and acted like an older version of me. It would be disconcerting, to say the least.  
 
But this is our reality.  
 
I am the product of our beloved’s transgressions, and it is a heavy burden to bear. To be the physical manifestation of an affair and constant symbol of infidelity is weighty when I have already carried too much. Furthermore, I am more than the sins of my mother and my father; I possess a unique identity, tied to, but apart from theirs.  
 
It is for these reasons that I have decided it is time to let my mother rest, to shelve her scarlet letter away. I hope you will, too. Forgiveness is the first step toward releasing our bond of betrayal, and it is necessary for our family’s collective healing.  
 
 
Sincerely,  
the outside daughter 
 
 
 
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  
K E Garland is a same-race, domestic adoptee and an award-winning creative nonfiction writer and blogger. She is also co-founder of Black Adoptees Meetup. Garland writes to demarginalize women's issues. Her essays have been published in several anthologies, including Chicken Soup for the Soul's I'm Speaking Now: Black Women Share their Truth in 101 Stories of Love, Courage and Hope and Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels. Her work has also appeared in online magazines, such as midnight & indigo and Raising Mothers. Garland's debut memoir, In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict, illustrates how unresolved, interrelated trauma, including adoption, can lead to a behavioral addiction. Her book was long listed for the 2023 Santa Fe Writers Project.  
K E Garland will also be reading for Words as Lifelines, a BIPOC read-a-thon to raise funds for three families surviving in Gaza on August 31, 2025 and co-presenting at 2025 Adoption Knowledge Affiliates Conference on November 7th. 
Follow her @kegarland on IG.

AKA invites you to hear from members of the extended family of adoption and the surrounding community.  While we take great care in curating the content, please know

• ​the opinions of the authors we invite to share are theirs and theirs only 
• some of the content shared here may be emotionally activating depending on your personal journey - therefore, please be sure to practice self care and seek the support you may need
• ​If you would like to be a featured guest-blogger please submit your piece for consideration to [email protected]