I consider my adoption to be something positive. If I was not adopted, I would have grown up as a neglected child in Costa Rica. Maybe, I would have been dead by now, or in prostitution. I would have had a life like my biological mother. That pattern has been broken now. I am grateful and happy to be here.

At the same time, my adoption has brought me a lot of sorrow. I have good moments, in which I am proud of myself and I feel positive in life. But in bad moments, I am scared of not being good enough. That I missed a basis is more noticeable then. In these moments I am distrusting and afraid of being abandoned. I become angry, and closed off. To the outside world, I always seem happy, but my boyfriend or my ex-husband get to experience the real me. I can be explosive when I am angry. I got therapy for the first time when I was 16. A year before that, I returned to Costa Rica for the first time since I was three years old, where I met my biological mother again. That was confusing for me. A year after that, I ran away from home. I roamed the streets for two months until the police found me. After that, I got help. My therapist told me: “Olga, you need to accept things for what they are.” This made me very angry at first, but I started to understand what he meant later. My therapy has been very useful. As I am getting older, I got more help, I found myself.

I have mixed feelings about my childhood. On the one hand, I had everything to have a good childhood. I had every possibility to play, I had friends, and my adoptive parents took good care of me. But still, I was deeply unhappy on the inside as a child. I was often very angry, so angry, that I could faint out of anger. I never cried in front of others, not even when I got hurt. I only cried alone at night in bed. I felt like I did not belong here, that I was not at home. I had to try my best and make others happy, I often acted like a bit of a clown. I was afraid I would be abandoned otherwise. I had mixed feelings about my relationship with my adoptive parents back then. If they were gone, I missed them so much. But when my adoptive mother hugged me, I stiffened. Sometimes I was furious as well and thought that my adoptive parents did not love me. Then I asked myself what on earth was I doing in the Netherlands.

pura vida

I am doing well now, which is the reason why I can talk about my adoption like this. I have two children, for whom I would do anything. I want to offer them a better basis than my mother was able to give me. I have a boyfriend and an ex-husband who are both very close to me. I love my adoptive parents to bits, but I am scared to share everything that is going on in my head with them. I am not ready yet.

To keep growing, I need to keep being aware of myself, and ask for help when I need it. I have a strong urge to survive, perhaps because I have been adopted. The people in Costa Rica need to accept that they do not have electricity for a week sometimes. They need to work with what they have. La ‘pura vida’, they call that. I realised that I have to work with who I am and what I have as well. And it really works like that.

 Tekst: Inge van Meurs Fotografie: Ton Sondag