How I Stopped Hiding Myself for Love and Approval

Editorial Staff / 19 seconds
June 19, 2025
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3 min read

TRIGGER WARNING: This post includes a brief mention of childhood physical abuse and may be triggering to some readers.

“The person who tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest.” ~Unknown

It’s Christmas morning. I’m seven years old. I sit on the hardwood floor with my sisters, in my nightgown surrounded by crumpled wrapping paper. I grab the next present to open. I tear off the paper. It’s a ballerina costume with a pink leotard, tutu, and pale pink tights.

As soon as I thank my adoptive parents, I leave the room with my new gift, keeping …

TRIGGER WARNING: This post includes a brief mention of childhood physical abuse and may be triggering to some readers.

“The person who tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest.” ~Unknown

As soon as I thank my adoptive parents, I leave the room with my new gift, keeping it hidden behind me. I get upstairs to my bedroom and stand in front of the mirror, rushing to get it out of the package and put it on, struggling to get the different fabrics to cooperate.

When I finally get it on my body, I run back downstairs with a big smile, excited to surprise everyone and maybe even earn some laughs. My heart races with excitement. I enter the living room. My adoptive parents look at me. I scan their faces for smiles. The smiles don’t come.

“What the hell did you do! You ain’t supposed to put it on yet!” Mom yells.

My heart’s beating loud. Why are they angry? I can’t understand the mean words my parents hurl at me. Dad gets up from his chair and attacks me. When he’s done, my face is hot and my hair disheveled. I hang my head and go back upstairs to my bedroom to change out of the costume. I look in the mirror at myself. ‘I’m so stupid.’ I think. I will never misread them again.

I was taken from my birthmother at ten months old and placed with foster parents who abused me, and despite this being common knowledge, they were allowed to adopt me.

Adoptees, even without abuse from adoptive parents, become experts at adapting. We know our family arrangement came to be because our birth parents weren’t up for the task of holding onto us; the reason doesn’t matter because children can only point inward. Beneath the surface, many adoptees carry an unconscious belief that sounds something like this:

“I am bad and unlovable. That is why I was not worth keeping the first time. If I can become whoever my adoptive parents want me to be, I will prevent being abandoned again.”

So, adoptees learn to bend and shift, careful not to incite disappointment or anger from their adoptive parents. For example, I didn’t dream of being a dancer as a child. I’d never taken a ballet class or even expressed an interest in it. So when I opened that costume on Christmas morning, I saw it as a clue. My eagerness to be a show pony in a ballet costume was an instinctual reaction because it meant earning a higher a