Nothing personal

Natalie K
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My name is Natalie and today I am here to tell you the story about the search for my identity. When people who are close or not so close to me, find out that I am adopted and that a documentary has been filmed since I actively began to search for my roots, what always follows is a series of questions. I have been answering these questions for years. Now that we finished filming the documentary I decided to make this podcast answering each one of them. Each episode is an answer to a question.

  1. 11/22/2025

    Chapter 21-How was it to knock on those doors?

    In May 2018, thanks to Paola Klechman and Lorena Quiroga — who, like me, had their identities substituted and sold by Doctor Bartucca — I arrived at the doors of the Human Rights Office inside the Civil Registry of Buenos Aires. As I mentioned before, by that time Lorena and Paola had been searching for years, so it was thanks to their earlier efforts that I eventually met Mercedes Yañez. The Human Rights Office, at least back then, was quite small. At one desk sat Mercedes; at another, Cecilia, who would later take her place after Mercedes retired. That office was dedicated to the restoration of biological identity. In other words, a person could go there with their birth certificate, and from that — along with the story they had been told about their adoption — an investigation would begin to identify possible biological mothers, who would then need to be visited in person. Based on the doctor’s name and the address appearing on the certificate, they could usually deduce in which hospital one might have been born (if the certificate didn’t already specify it). From there, the search continued in the Civil Registry archives, examining birth records around the listed date — which was often false. Among those records, the ones that drew attention were those belonging to young, single mothers, or to babies recorded as having died shortly after birth under suspicious circumstances. They also took note of the birth records of babies who later disappeared completely from the system — children who simply vanished from all official traces. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. But Mercedes, and later Cecilia, using their knowledge and intuition, searched through data that to the rest of us would be indecipherable, trying to locate mothers who, many years ago, had given birth in a municipal hospital in Buenos Aires. In May 2018, Mercedes handed me a list of fifteen women I needed to visit, along with very specific instructions on how to approach each one — the result of years of experience knocking on the doors of possible biological mothers. She emphasized how crucial it was to follow the procedure to the letter, since the success of any encounter would depend on it. The process went as follows: once you had the mother’s address, you had to go there in person, and alone. If someone other than the mother opened the door, you had to invent a pretext to ask to speak with her. It was essential not to tell anyone except the mother why you were there. You might say something like, “I have a personal message from my late mother, who was a schoolmate of Mrs. [so-and-so].” You had to remember that the mother might never have told anyone about the existence of the child she had over forty years earlier. The daughter might be the result of a rape she never spoke about, or of an affair she still feels ashamed of. Most likely, the mother had rebuilt her life, and that baby belonged to a very distant past. One had to proceed with great sensitivity — hence the small, protective lie. Once the mother appeared, you first looked for any physical resemblance. Then you would explain that you were searching for your biological identity, and that this was how you had come to her door. You could also describe how you’d reached her name (through Mercedes, Cecilia, the Human Rights Office, the Civil Registry, etc.), and reassure her that her information was strictly confidential. With luck, one might agree to a DNA test — though most would not. And finally, one last rule: never call by phone. When people tried that, the mothers would deny everything and never answer again, losing any chance, even, to see whether there was a resemblance. Fifteen women. Fifteen addresses. Fifteen doors. Fifteen stories. Fifteen encounters. During that trip in 2018, we never managed to begin such a journey. With Simon and my partner at the time, we decided to return to Sweden, regroup, and plan to come back in September. But when September came, my partner and I had already begun our separation. Then February arrived, and I didn’t have a cent. By May 2019, I still hadn’t managed to get back on my feet. Later that year, Simon and I decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money to return as soon as possible. We aimed for May 2020. By February, thanks to our friends’ generosity, we had gathered enough to pay for tickets and accommodation — we were ready. Then, in March 2020, the world shut down — and remained closed until March 2022. We tried several times to make the trip, but the Covid restrictions in Argentina were so strict that we couldn’t risk a fifteen-day quarantine when we only had funds to stay for three weeks. So we waited — until finally, in June 2022, we were able to travel. By then Mercedes had retired, so we reconnected with Cecilia. She reviewed our file and concluded that, of the fifteen cases, only five were truly plausible. Of those five, we managed to contact four, and I was able to visit three. Whenever I tell this part of the story, the next question is always: “What was it like?” I fall silent, searching for words. “What was it like?” I echo, and I see everything unfold before me — as if it were a film, as if it hadn’t happened to me. Until my body begins to feel the pain I don’t really want to remember. But it’s all still there, waiting to emerge. Life, in all its richness — its light and shadow, love and rage, helplessness and longing, hope and emptiness; the irretrievable years and the timeless flow of the universe moving intuitively behind every gesture of reality — and, at the same time, the Argentine reality: fierce, relentless. An unbreakable will, an unyielding resilience, and yet a deep wish for everything to simply end. A silent scream caught in my throat, a heart refusing to harden, humility before fate and protest against what lay before me. A deep yearning for someone to hold me and offer comfort, and at the same time the understanding that this path was mine alone to walk. The doors — only I could knock on them. Everything was to be found within me. All of it, at once. In this soul, in this body. I thought, at some point, that I would break — but I didn’t. Inside me, it seems, there was far more strength than I ever imagined I could have.

    12 min

  2. 07/22/2025

    Chapter 20-Why can't you feel all the love around you?

    “What happened was a long time ago, Natalie. You’re the one who won’t let go of the past.” How I wish I could. Just let the past go. Be free, live in the here and now. My whole life—what now amounts to thirty years of therapy, thirty years of meditating, and seventeen in the twelve-step program—has been about trying to accept and let go. I can’t control the world, but I can take responsibility for my actions, for seeking help. The message has always been the same: Accept, feel, let go, and be grateful. Accept, feel, let go, be grateful. Become aware, act accordingly, give myself love, value myself, ignore the voices in my head that keep repeating the message of worthlessness. That message that breathes through every pore of my being. Before I even realize it, it’s there, whispering in my ear, offering explanations for why people around me behave the way they do. Always confirming the underlying belief. Blinding me to the complex, nuanced reality. Of course I know all this, so even feeling pain or anger makes me ashamed. How do I know if what I feel and perceive is real, or if it’s trauma? Where is my truth? What is real? And again: Why can’t I let go of this identity? Very recently, thankfully, I was finally able to attend a group therapy session for adoptees, organized by the same institution that provides free therapy to all adopted people, in Swedish: adopterad.com. For many years, I had been trying to find other adoptees and talk about the issues that affect only us. In fact, back in 2017, during one of my lowest points in depression, I decided to seek psychiatric help—even though I was already seeing a psychologist. I felt like I couldn’t go on anymore, so I had an interview with a psychiatrist who was supposed to refer me to another psychiatrist, where I assume I would get medication. This psychiatrist interviewed me for an hour. He asked me all kinds of questions, including what kind of help I was looking for. I told him directly: I would love to go to group therapy with other adoptees. He looked at me, puzzled: “Why?” he asked. “Well,” I said, “I have a lot of experience with twelve-step groups, and I know how helpful it is to hear other people’s stories.” “But why?” he asked again, “that will only make you identify even more as a victim. In fact, people with trauma like you become very egocentric because of the pain trauma causes.” “Yes, I know that,” I replied. “That’s why I already go to twelve-step meetings for adult children of dysfunctional families, precisely to break out of that egocentrism and listen to others’ experiences.” The psychiatrist looked frustrated, irritated. I was calm, not backing down. “And what do you think is going to change by finding your biological identity? Nothing will change!” he insisted. Then I, again very patiently, said: “I understand that for someone who isn’t adopted, it’s hard to understand.” To which he replied: “I am adopted, and I have no need to find my biological identity.” I looked at him, paused for a moment, and said: “Well, if you don’t feel that need, I understand why you can’t empathize with mine.” That answer, of course, irritated him even more. He tried to convince me that all I needed was therapy to repair my attachment pattern and said that the psychologist I was seeing wasn’t doing a good job. I’d like to add a small detail here: that psychologist was Martha Cullberg, one of the most prominent psychologists in Sweden, who has written multiple books. It became painfully clear how ignorant society is about this topic—and this person in particular. Not even this psychiatrist, who was adopted himself, could understand the level of trauma he was dealing with. Of course, not everyone needs to know their biological origin—but let’s just say it’s not that hard to understand that someone who doesn’t know might want to know. So, in the spring of this year, 2025, when I was finally able to join a group and meet other adoptees, I thanked the heavens and every saint from every religion and belief system, because at last, I could begin to understand myself a little more—through the stories of others. And just as I had imagined, reflected in each person’s story, I could see an immeasurable pain. And not only that—I could hear the same questions I carry within me: Why does this hurt so much? What has been happening to me? How can I change it? No one reacts like I do, no one feels the way I feel... I cried through the entire first session. And not from pain—but from gratitude. We were a group of strangers, adoptees from different countries, of different ages—but so alike. Accept, feel, let go, be grateful. In this search to accept myself, to understand what’s happening to me, to forgive myself—in 2018, the last time I went to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo with Simón—I asked for an interview with someone who could explain more to me about Argentina’s adoption laws. Because let’s not forget: we are never detached from the history that precedes us. This person explained the history of adoption law in Argentina. The law was officially enacted in 1948, granting adoptive children the same rights as biological heirs. So then, before legal adoption existed—what was there? From what I understood, there were “child circulation practices”, referring to those transactions in which the responsibility for a child was transferred from one adult to another. In Argentina, such practices have a long tradition, and various sources indicate that despite the lack of legal regulation, throughout the 19th century and much of the 20th, adoptions were carried out either by charitable organizations or informally between private individuals. These children weren’t “real” children—not biological ones—but at least they were given the right to inherit just like biological heirs. But what does that really mean? What is the stigma carried by being adopted? Or more precisely—what did I feel, when the people around me found out that I was adopted? What did my little girl mind perceive? The first word that comes to mind is: illegitimacy. Not truly being. Not truly belonging. Not truly deserving. In June 2002, I moved to Sweden. Far from Argentina—and although it could have been even farther or more different from Argentina—it truly felt like arriving on another planet. Not long after arriving, I realized the hardest part was finding myself. In Argentina, I had my role, my identity, my place. I was playing a character that expressed itself in a society which, in turn, reflected back what it saw in me. I saw myself in a certain way, and society reflected back the image I projected to the world around me. Now, in this new world, the reflection I received of myself was completely different. I became another character—one I didn’t identify with. I couldn’t find myself. I didn’t recognize myself. And I didn’t understand what this new society was telling me about who I was. Now, twenty-three years later, I’ve developed a character and an identity rooted in the reality that surrounds me. Basically, I’ve become Swedish. I’m still a fish out of water—but for different reasons than I was in Argentina. I’m a fish out of water because, quite literally, I come from a different stream. What I mean with all of this is that we, as people, are never separate from the reality around us, nor are we immune to the message society reflects back to us about who we are. I always say it: We are fish in the current, birds in the wind, trying to find our path, our story, which lives within a historical context shaped by invisible forces beyond our conscious efforts to break free from them. As I mentioned before, adoptees—or people with substituted identities—are surrounded by messages about why we didn’t grow up with our biological parents, from the very day we are born. Daily messages, from early on, like mantras repeated consciously or unconsciously everywhere we look. Mantras we hear and repeat to ourselves endlessly—about illegitimacy, unworthiness, and more. Silent mantras, etched into the retinas of our eyes, filtering everything through that lens and echoing the same message into eternity. Without even realizing it. “Do you think you would have been different if you’d grown up with your biological family?” people have asked me many times. “I don’t know. I’ve never not been adopted. This is all I know.” The number one cliché I always heard—and denied for most of my life—was that my low self-esteem came from the fact that my biological mother abandoned me. That meant I identified as abandonable. According to this cliché, I felt like I didn’t have the same value as a baby who grew up with their biological family. Defective from the start. “That can’t be,” I’d think. “It can’t be that simple.” Because if it were, why didn’t I instead identify as a deeply wanted baby? A baby so desired that my adoptive parents even broke the law to get me? The mantra of “abandonment” was much louder than the mantra of “deeply wanted child.” I internalized rejection and abandonment far more than the love and longing of my adoptive parents to have a daughter. How unfair. How different things could’ve been if I had internalized the love instead! What strength I would have now! But I’m just a fish swimming in the current of a given fate. The voices I internalized were those of my adoptive family, when they spoke about my genes; my schoolmates, who reminded me of the color of my skin; the teachers who treated me differently for not being blonde and white; my little first-grade boyfriend, also adopted, who told me we belonged together because we had the same skin tone. The voice of my mom’s friend who, referring to someone else planning to adopt, said: “How horrible! Who knows where those genes com

    19 min

  3. 03/02/2025

    Chapter 19-Did you ever reach out to the adoption contacts?

    Reaching out directly to the source of information about my illegal adoption would have probably been the most logical and sensible thing to do in this entire search. After all, I knew who they were—or at least who the person was that informed my mother of my existence. In fact, one of my best friends in Sweden, an Argentine son of exiles from the military dictatorship, gave me the idea, but I never dared to do it until May 2018. I’ll explain why. My mom and my dad, as I’ve mentioned before, were opposed to my search. The fact that I would go and ask their friend if she knew anything more about my adoption filled them with terror and shame. “Don’t you dare bother her!” they told me. And to be honest, I felt the same way. As ridiculous as it sounds, even though I had the right to my own history, the idea of knocking on someone’s door and asking what they knew about my past terrified me. Especially because everyone—absolutely everyone—since 2003 had assumed that I was the child of desaparecidos, of a disappeared person. That meant that my search would imply that this person was somehow involved in a crime against humanity. And I know—a crime is a crime, and the guilty are guilty, period—but for me, it wasn’t that simple. Maybe it was my constant Stockholm syndrome, my codependency, my denial, my fear of rejection, my fear of people being angry with me, my fear of conflict, my shame, my low self-esteem, or a combination of all of that, but I couldn’t find the strength within me to take that step. Until the DNA result from The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo came back negative, and that path was closed. If I was the daughter of desaparecidos, we would never find out. After Simón and my partner at the time convinced me to continue despite the negative result, the search had to take a new path. On one hand, it meant approaching the Human Rights Office and Mercedes Yañez, and on the other, going directly to the source—to the witnesses who truly knew what had happened in August 1977 when my family went to pick me up from Dr. Bartucca’s place. It took me a lot—an incredible amount—of courage to first contact the daughter of the woman I will call Marta for anonymity. Marta’s daughter had been my brother’s schoolmate, and every time I had met her, she had been so kind to me. I wrote to her, asking if she thought it would be okay for me to contact her mother and ask her about my adoption. She said yes and gave me her mother’s contact information. So, in May 2018, during one of our trips to continue my search, I gathered all the courage I had and went to visit Marta and her husband in their apartment in Palermo, Buenos Aires. I was terrified, not knowing what to expect. After so much time, so much anticipation, after having lived with a narrative of how everything had happened at the beginning of my life—what truth would emerge? They received me, of course, with all the warmth and kindness in the world. They hadn’t seen me in so long! After all, the couple had always kept me in their thoughts. Our destinies had crossed in the strangest way, creating an undeniable bond. First, we talked about my life in Sweden—how I handled the cold and the darkness, whether I actually could make a living making music, if I was married and had children… the usual things. I truly felt like they had been waiting for me. After a while, as we drank coffee and ate sándwiches de miga—those sandwiches I love so much and miss dearly since moving to Stockholm—Marta told her husband that she and I would go to the living room to talk. He wasn’t included in the conversation. “Interesting,” I thought, because for all those years, I had been sure that the husband—the man I had seen in uniform at their daughter’s wedding, the event that triggered this entire search—was the main figure in this story. But apparently, that wasn’t the case. At least, he wasn’t the protagonist of the story that Marta had protected in her memory for so many years, waiting for the day I would come knocking at her door. She, more than anyone else—far more than my own family—made it clear to me how important truth and memory are. Perhaps that’s why she had preserved it so carefully. This is the story she told me the day I visited her: In August 1977, Marta’s brother—who was a truck driver at the time—was on his route from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia (a stretch of just over 3,000 kilometers) when he received news that his six-months-pregnant wife had been hospitalized. Marta’s brother, whom I’ll call Ralf for anonymity, took the first flight back to Buenos Aires to be with his wife, who had to undergo an emergency C-section. Unfortunately, the baby didn’t survive. It turned out that she had been in severe pain for three days due to a perforated intestine, which the doctors had failed to detect. In that time, the baby had become intoxicated and did not survive. The family, understandably, was devastated. At that moment, Marta’s aunt—her mother’s sister-in-law and Ralf’s godmother—contacted him, telling him that there was a baby girl available for adoption. Since he had just lost one, she asked if he wanted to go pick her up. Ralf, who had just lost his daughter and whose wife was now in intensive care, fighting for her life with a gangrenous intestine, reacted with horror and refused the offer. Marta, meanwhile, wanting to help her brother and sister-in-law, who was in critical condition, went to my parents’ house to ask if someone could donate blood for her. She knew them not only from the kindergarten where her daughter and my brother went but also because her brother Ralf played handball in the same German sports club as my father and my uncle. That’s when she told my mother the whole story—including the part about her aunt Anita suggesting they adopt the baby—and Ralf’s reaction. That same day or the next, Marta received a call from my mother, who expressed interest in the baby girl up for adoption—me. My mother told her that she had been on the adoption waiting list for three years and had still not been assigned a baby girl. She asked for the contact of the doctor who had the baby waiting for adoption. Marta gave her the phone number and thought nothing more of it—until the next day, when she stopped by my parents’ house and, to her great surprise, found me there, wrapped up like a package. My mother told her that the night before, she, my father, and my brother had gone to pick me up. Apparently, they had spoken with the doctor in the evening and, around midnight, had driven to his address—a private clinic—to get me. They returned home as quickly as possible, knowing they were doing something illegal and aware that they had violated the military curfew. My mother recalled being terrified that someone would follow them and take the baby away. The next day, she took me to the pediatrician and had to go out and buy baby clothes. Everything had happened so fast that they weren’t prepared for my arrival. Marta didn’t know anything beyond that. She had waited 41 years to tell me everything she remembered. She even asked me several times if my parents had ever told me how it all happened, and when I told her that neither of them wanted to share anything, she was horrified. “And how are you supposed to heal if you don’t know your truth?” she exclaimed, in pain. Marta understood everything. She had preserved a piece of my story and waited for me—consciously or unconsciously—knowing that one day I would ask, and she would fulfill her role: to pass the information to its rightful owner. To ensure the truth didn’t disappear. To help me heal. Something so clear to her, yet denied to me by my family all along. A question that comes up from time to time—often with the best intentions—from people who grew up knowing their biological origins is: Why do I need to know? If I already am who I am, why does it matter what happened at the moment of my birth? Why does it matter why my biological family couldn't raise me? What does it have to do with me that my biological mother gave me away to strangers? What matters is the here and now, the love that surrounds me, the life I have built. I'll try to explain it, to bring some clarity to the matter. Surely, at some point in life, you've been in love. You felt your heart wide open, expanded, fragile, vulnerable, and surrendered. And it was impossible not to love. That person became the center of your universe, just like in love songs. You felt at home with them, safe, seen, as if their presence confirmed your existence. But one day, out of nowhere, in the midst of that vulnerability, the person holding your heart in their hands suddenly rejects you. They say or do something that makes it clear that the love isn't reciprocated. They leave. They disappear, without really explaining anything. At that moment, it's very likely that your mind, trying to understand what happened—so it doesn't happen again, so you’re not abandoned or rejected again, to avoid the feeling of betrayal, the helplessness and lack of control, maybe even the shame of having believed you were loved—starts to create theories or stories about what happened and why. Something to explain the other person’s behavior, something that could predict it in someone else in the future. Now, let’s translate that heartbreak story—something that hurt so much—into something as profound as the reality that those who were supposed to protect and love us more than anyone in the world, instead, gave us away to strangers. And we never know why, or what really happened. The mind starts crafting a narrative with the information it has to make sense of it. A narrative that, over time, becomes our identity. "This happened to me because of who I am." "I was abandoned, sold, mistreated because I am worthless. I have no value; that’s why I was abandoned and mi

    19 min

  4. 09/28/2024

    Chapter 18-How did your partner handle the search?

    Romantic relationships are a reflection of the attachment model with which we relate to others. As I mentioned before, this model is based on how our parents, or those who raised us, showed or taught us to connect with them. That's why, first and foremost, it's important to put my story in context. It's also important to remember that this is only my personal experience and not the absolute truth. And even though I've shared stories with other adopted people, finding many common points between their stories and mine, I repeat, this is only mine. My story, my experience. This is a sensitive topic for me, and it’s difficult to know where to begin. Maybe I can start with the question itself: How did all of this affect my partner? This is a question I’m often asked by partners of adopted people. Worried about how they can help, or how they can contribute to the healing of such a deep wound, they show great interest in knowing how my partner handled it at the time. Was he able to bear my painful search process? Was he there to support me through everything? And what happened to love and romance in the midst of such a profound task of healing? I’ll try to be as fair and impartial as possible, out of respect for all the support and love I received, which, honestly, wasn’t little. My partner of many years, who accompanied me through most of this search, is the one I referred to in previous chapters as John. The relationship ended abruptly and traumatically at the beginning of 2019, but for the first 10 years of the 13 we spent together, it was the most beautiful and healthy relationship I’ve ever had. John was the one who insisted from the beginning that I needed to search for my roots. He saw that emptiness inside me, and perhaps, because he subconsciously thought—just like many partners of adopted people—that if I found my biological origins, my wounds would heal, and I would be able to give him all the love he needed, he supported me in taking the necessary steps in my search. He was the one who always said it didn’t matter whether I was the child of the disappeared or not; that a tragedy had occurred at the start of my life regardless of who my biological parents were. It took me a long time to understand this, as in my mind, my mother had given me up and discarded me because I was an inconvenience in her life. But if I had been the child of the disappeared, the message reality conveyed to me was exactly the opposite. For John, it was clear that in most cases, a mother doesn’t want to let go of her baby, and that it must take very complicated circumstances for that to happen. He truly got involved in the search, traveled with me to Argentina, accompanied me to the Argentine embassy to submit the DNA, and stood by my side when I received the results. He learned to stroke my hair when I had panic attacks and even bought a smoothie machine when the anxiety from the search left me unable to swallow solid food, and I could only consume liquids. John was my best friend. He was one of those partners who helped with everything he could—from the logistics of buying the plane tickets to Argentina to enduring hurtful comments from my family and defending me when he saw that I didn’t even react to them anymore. In the course of the making of the  documentary, he, Simon, and I were a team. Each one of us had a role. The three of us were moving forward, slowly but surely. But as with everything in life, things must follow their own course, and the breakup of this relationship was inevitable. Maybe it was because he met me when he was 20, and it was time to explore other horizons, or perhaps because the search was like a dark cloud that overshadowed everything and eventually consumed the love he had for me. I remember in October 2015, after I had been called by the Argentine embassy in Stockholm to submit my DNA, I noticed his love for me slowly fading. I started to feel desperate, but I could understand him. Insi

    19 min

  5. 06/19/2024

    Chapter 17-Can the trauma of adoption worsen or diminish depending on the adopting family?

    The family that adopts us is our world. In that world, we live, we breathe, and we grow. They are our reference, our starting point, our home. There's no way that whatever our adoptive family does won't influence us.  Of course, it's important to remember that all families are different, all adopted individuals are different, all adoption situations are different, and all forms of relationships are different. It's difficult to generalize and simply say that if things happen one way or another way, the trauma will automatically diminish. But what I discovered in my case, and from what others have told me, is that the way the adopting family treats us, will either reinforce or heal the trauma of feeling that "I was abandoned because there's something inherently wrong with me," also known as that internal voice that, like a broken record, says, "Obviously, I was born to be abandoned and rejected. That's my fate, that's who I am."  Those internalized voices, those beliefs, came from somewhere. It's not something children just came up with on their own. It's not something they choose. In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, I found myself battling my demons: my codependency, my inability to set boundaries, my inability to end the toxic relationship I was in, which clearly wasn't good for me, and my obsessive attachment to someone I really shouldn't be with. Despite years of therapy, all the books I read, and all the twelve-step meetings, there was something I still hadn't understood. How could it be that despite all the knowledge, all that mental clarity, I still kept repeating the same relational patterns? Could it really be that the beginning of my life had impacted me much more than I had understood? In 2021, I decided to find out once and for all when I discovered that free online therapy sessions were being offered in Sweden for adopted people. And this probably happened as a result of the data that came to light about the systematic theft of babies during the dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s and their sale to first world countries. Countries like Sweden, where an estimated 2200 babies arrived. The therapist who attended to me asked if I had already been to therapy and how I needed help. I got straight to the point, I told her that I had been in therapy since I was 17, but I felt I needed information on how adoption could have affected me and above all, whether this trauma could have been healed or at least mitigated with the family that adopted me. She asked me to describe a bit how it was growing up with my family, and it didn't take her long to confirm to me that beyond my adoption, my adoptive parents and the way they handled the fact that my brother and I were not their biological children, made the initial trauma of not belonging to their same genetic clan much more potent. Now, before I continue with the next story, I'm going to make a parenthesis.  Having children is not easy. I've seen it with my friends. It's the greatest love and the greatest demand. It's the most beautiful and most annoying relationship. It's energizing and draining. And from what I can observe, it's the greatest vulnerability one can experience. As my friend said the other day: "It's as if your heart suddenly was outside your body." That's why I've always looked at people who decide to have children with great admiration. Returning to the topic, I'm going to use my own mom as a reference point and maybe some of you out there might recognize yourselves in this story.  When she died in 2013, I felt like a part of me died with her. I was by her side until she took her last breath. She, who was so afraid of everything, shouldn't have been alone in such an uncertain moment. After her death, many people approached me telling me how much she loved us, my brother and me. "She devoted herself to you," they said. I would smile and agree: "Yes, my mom gave us everything." But inside, I wondered, how did no one ever see what was happe

    23 min

  6. 03/25/2024

    Chapter 16-Who is Mercedes, the liberator of slaves? Part2

    Mercedes, like most of the people I crossed paths with in my search, with a couple of exceptions, initially treated me with a bit of distrust and distance. Almost as if she had said to me: "Did you come here to waste my time?" Sitting in her office, she showed me a stack of folders that were cases waiting to be picked up. "See that pile? Well, it's from people who came, left their birth certificate, and never came back. They made me search for nothing! Everyone wants to be saved, but nobody takes responsibility for their own lives! And let me tell you something, there's a queue, so you leave this here now and it'll be months before I have anything." It seemed that there was a queue for the investigation. Many people approached her office with their birth certificates, so Mercedes had a lot of work. I explained that I came from Sweden, that I was filming a documentary, and that as soon as I had a folder with all the information about the potential mothers I needed to visit, I would definitely do it, because otherwise, the documentary team would kill me. This wasn't just about me anymore. I was sitting there alone, but I came with a group of people following me. This wasn't a spontaneous outburst; I was on a mission. Because as we filmed and the years went by, I realized that child trafficking was so common, and those of us searching were so many, and the social consensus so wide, that what started as simply a search for my biological identity gradually became a need to make something visible that seemed invisible to most people. Mercedes explained many things to me, one of which is that I wasn't illegally adopted because an adoption is always legal. There's a document that says who the mother is, what time one was born, and where. Instead, I had a substituted identity. That is, I had an identity at birth, which was erased and completely replaced. And although growing up with people who aren't my biological parents affected my psyche in the same way it would affect anyone else who didn't grow up with their biological family for whatever reason, the substituted identity, she said, carries a special flavor that arises from the context in which it happens. There's a respect for the history of the newborn and for the mother who gave birth in the legal adoption, which disappears in the substitution of identity. The newborn, completely unprotected, is a product up for sale. The mother who gave birth generally lacks any rights or decision-making power. Consciously or unconsciously, we, the substituted, know this. Mercedes explained all this and more. She helped me put words to sensations and emotions that I've carried in my body for so long without really knowing what they were about. We also talked about the significant difference the family we grow up with can make, how the parents handled the truth, and managed their own distress. By the end of that trip in 2018, understanding our special situation, Mercedes prepared a list of fourteen women to visit. Yes. Not one, not two, not five. There were fourteen. We counted with Simón, somewhat depending on how much I could bear emotionally, and we concluded that it would be fourteen days of visiting mothers, plus a couple of days of rest in between. That would imply that our stay would be extended by almost another month, and we didn't have the budget to stay that much longer in Argentina. We couldn't do it on that trip, so I told Mercedes that we had to organize ourselves and come back as soon as possible. She looked at us distrustfully when we said it, but in the end, there was a documentary being filmed, with a production company involved, she knew that giving up the search wasn't an option. As I mentioned earlier, I can always count on life to ruin my plans. In that same year, 2018, after that trip to Argentina, the thirteen-year relationship I had with my partner, slowly but surely, came to an end. Besides having to deal with the practicalities of moving out along with the emotional fallout, I also didn’t didn't have the money to travel to Argentina in 2019, so Simon and I organized a crowdfunding campaign to be able to travel as soon as possible. On February 15, 2020, we held an event where I had a concert with my band , and between songs, Simon showed images of what we had filmed in the previous trips to Argentina. The event was a total success, and we raised the money we needed to travel. We planned to do it in May 2020, but we didn't count on what put the world into a lockdown less than a month after the concert. We didn't count on that supposed badly boiled bat soup. We didn't count on the whole world entering a lethargy for the next few years, or that Argentina would be one of the countries with the longest and strictest lockdown in the world. Just like many others did, it was time for me to reorganize. A time for introspection, time to wait, while the world adjusted to the pandemic. In Sweden, the restrictions were barely felt. Social distancing already existed before the pandemic, so there wasn't much of a difference. Live events like concerts were canceled, but in the face of the new reality, the message that this life is fragile, that it can end at any moment, hit people hard, and contrary to what I expected, I had a lot of work producing music. Everyone wanted to fulfill their dream of recording their songs. It was as As if suddenly everyone realized that it's in this life that you have  to fulfill your dreams, because there's no sequel to this movie. News from Argentina reached me through my dad, who unfortunately fell down the stairs of his house in 2021, which quickly worsened his health. Argentina was very difficult. The pandemic was making everything that was complicated before the pandemic even more complicated. In Stockholm, people asked me how things were going in Buenos Aires, how people were surviving. And I answered them what I've been answering since I moved to Sweden: "Argentinians are used to crises. They have developed the incredible ability to move forward in ways that one could never imagine from here." Indeed, I learned that despite everything that was happening, in Argentina, many other people with substituted identities had organized themselves and advocated for the right to biological identity. In other words, many people like me were tired of nobody helping them and were fighting for the right that all people have to know our genetic and cultural heritage, our biological parents, and the circumstances of our birth, among other things. Furthermore, they had presented a bill to Congress to receive government assistance in the search for their biological identity. Finally, on April 21, 2022, the Law of Biological Identity or Origin was approved in the Senate of the Province of Buenos Aires. That law is legislation that seeks to be a tool for those who have doubts about their biological origin. The purpose of this law is to guarantee people's free access to all information related to their own origin identity, which is recorded in the various registers of provincial public bodies, for which the State must provide the necessary means. In other words, the work of Mercedes, who only worked in the Capital, became a law that is slowly being approved in all provinces of Argentina. As I said before, happily, we are destined to evolve. When we returned in June 2022, post-pandemic, Mercedes had already retired, so instead, we went to the Human Rights Office to talk to Cecilia, her successor. Cecilia, like Mercedes, took her time to explain each case to us, and we could ask all kinds of questions. With patience and tenacity, Ceci helped us in every way she could, following the investigation to the last case. I saw Mercedes on the last day before leaving back to Sweden. As always, a hard and warm welcome at the same time. We met at a café in downtown Buenos Aires, along with Simon, who was filming the meeting. I was so happy to see her, I had so much to tell her! And she had so much to tell me! She ranted as always against the government and the country's corruption, demanding that people start taking responsibility for their lives and stop blaming everyone for everything. She talked about the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo as always, and she told me again about her own story and the disappearance of her brother before the military dictatorship of '76. Mercedes herself had survived so much. We cried together, laughed together, and before leaving, I said to her, "Don't you want to adopt me instead?" referring to the fact that my birth certificate is fake anyway. I didn't want to leave. If there is one person in the world who understands what I went through, what it cost me, what I've been carrying, and the emptiness inside, it's Mercedes. But time is a tyrant, so I had to say goodbye and continue my journey. Mercedes is an unstoppable force who never gives up. She's the kind of person I deeply admire, someone who, without fanfare or glory, did what needed to be done because it was the right thing to do. But where did that calling come from? Why did she dedicate all that time and energy to the substituted, to those whom nobody cared about? Before I left, I took courage and asked  her, and the answer was as beautiful as Mercedes herself. It went something like this: "Well, someone has to do it. This can’t continue like this." I remember the time she told me the story of her name, "Mercedes". "Do you know what it means?" she said. "Liberator of slaves." Within her, the desire for justice burns fiercely. Was it always her destiny to be who she is? Thank you, Mercedes, and thank you, Cecilia, for freeing all of us, slaves to our emptiness, slaves to our search.

    16 min

  7. 01/21/2024

    Chapter 15-Who is Mercedes, the liberator of slaves? part1

    The DNA result of The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo was negative, and as the judge in charge of my case said: “This case is closed now”. Even though Claudia Carlotto told me that since technology continued to develop, there was still a chance that a relative could be found in their DNA bank, for me the path was now closed. After receiving the news on that 30th of March, 2016, I didn't want to know anything else regarding my search, my expectations, or myself. More than anything I felt shame.  For 14 years, I had convinced the people around me of my story, that I was part of a historical event, that I had relevance, that I was the answer to the search of a grandmother who was desperately looking for her stolen grandchild. I was special. I had even managed to convince myself of that. But now there was evidence. I was not. In my mind, and to the rest of the world, I went back to being just another adopted person, I had been given away, or sold. I was the daughter of a poor person, a mistake of someone who, unlike the middle and upper class, did not have access to the possibility of abortion. How did it occur to me that I could be anything else than that? Hadn't everyone already made it clear to me? Me and my supposed “slum-genes.” As I said before, I returned to Sweden and decided to lock myself in my music studio, dedicate myself to work, and pretend that I disappeared. That I didn't exist. That I better never ever even think about touching the subject of the search for my biological identity, I felt so ashamed… But what was happening to me? Because it wasn't just the pain and hopelessness of not having found a biological family, there was something else torturing my soul. I could hear the voices inside me when I closed my eyes. I could see the scenes of my childhood and adolescence repeating themselves over and over again and I couldn't find a way to defend myself from these “truths” that harassed me day and night. My partner at that time,  when he saw that I did not allow myself to feel the pain of the result of the DNA test, told me: “Whether you are the daughter of a missing person or not, it does not change the fact that a tragedy did happen when you were born”. He told me that the fact that I had not grown up with my biological family was hurtful enough. I didn't understand what he was talking about. I listened to his words, I could understand what he was saying, but didn’t comprehend its meaning. Why couldn't I feel compassion for my own history? Why did I revoke myself the right to feel my own pain and instead just felt shame? It was difficult for me to identify the enemy that was haunting me this time. An intelligent and stealthy enemy, which was hidden between the folds of my cerebral cortex and the muscular tissue of my heart, from where it pumped its poison permanently. What had found a perfect host in me was the racism that surrounded me from such a young age. An internalized racism that had been normalized in the form of an inner voice that repeatedly gave me the reasons over and over again why I was genetically inferior. An assertive and insistent voice that was almost imperceptible. A voice that was not mine. A voice that belongs to the world we live in that categorizes people as superior and inferior. An extended weapon of the ruling power that aims to maintain those differences, the structures of power and privileges, by dividing us between blacks, browns and whites, heterosexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals, women and men, “civilized” societies versus “primitive” societies, “developed” countries  versus “developing” countries and much more, since the European colonialism. Well, it was my way of surviving. It was what I had to adopt as a child in order to find a space where I could be accepted. Basically, my inner child told herself: “if you can't beat them, join them,” and despite the pain it caused her, she chose to reject herself and at least feel like she

    30 min

  8. 12/22/2023

    Chapter 14-Who are the "Bartuquitas"?

    By 2016, the search had taken me to Dr. Bartucca, to the trafficking of babies, to the social consensus that makes everything possible, to the tyrannical reality that decides the fate of babies born to poor mothers in municipal hospitals, to people's impunity, to the fear of our adoptive parents of losing us, and the wound that comes with having been trafficked, sold like a pet. And  while we're at it, I'm going to take a minute to explain or clarify the difference between a legal adoption and an illegal adoption, which is actually called “identity substitution”, because the original identity is completely erased and instead it is replaced with a new one. In the case of a legal adoption, an organization is almost always involved that controls that the baby or child who lacks adults who can take care of him or her is protected and treated with the greatest respect and care possible. Generally there is a record of where that child came from, place and date of birth, and sometimes you can even find the name of the mother or father in some file.  At least at a legal level it is known that there was consent from the biological parents, so that the adoption could take place. Depending on the country or system, the adoption procedure differs a little, but the idea is, essentially, that the rights of the child are protected and that their destination is a family that has the means to ensure that the child is provided for with material and emotional stability so that it can grow and develop as best as possible. Parents who want to adopt must go through a process where it is decided whether they are suitable to be adoptive parents or not and then they must wait until there is finally a child who is looking for a new home. Even after the adoption has been approved and some time has passed, the family is visited by social workers to check that the child is doing well with his or her new family. Identity substitution—which is generally called illegal adoption—happens in the dark, in secret, outside the law. It is all about erasing the information there is about the biological roots of the child. That is, who the parents were, where and when the child is born, and what place he or she came from, as if the baby magically and spontaneously materialized into existence. It is not known whether or not the biological parents consented to give away the baby, and it is not uncommon for that baby to have been stolen right after birth, faking its death. Those who manage the identity substitution system are generally doctors or midwives, who are not accountable to anyone, and do not have to respond to any law or regulation, other than the price set by the market. Adoptive parents are selected based on how much they can pay, or for other conveniences. At no time no one checks if they are fit to be parents, or if it can be assured that they will have the emotional and material stability so that the child can develop as best as possible. What's more, that child can be sold to anyone, to fulfill any type of purpose, because no one is going to check, sue, or imprison anyone. That child is the property of the buyer, and in the best of cases, the buyer is a middle-class couple with emotional and material stability and with a great desire to be parents and love to give. In the worst case scenario, that child will be an object that will satisfy its owner in the way he wants, which is also known as slavery. In both cases, the legally adopted person and the person with a substituted  identity (aka illegally adopted) carry the trauma of abandonment at some point. But in the case of having been trafficked, the person carries the trauma of abandonment and something else. Something that is difficult for me to put into words, something dark and perverse, as a consequence of having had a price, of having simply been part of a transaction. Something that comes from the fact that at the most vulnerable moment of our lives, we were used for the benefit o

    29 min
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About

My name is Natalie and today I am here to tell you the story about the search for my identity. When people who are close or not so close to me, find out that I am adopted and that a documentary has been filmed since I actively began to search for my roots, what always follows is a series of questions. I have been answering these questions for years. Now that we finished filming the documentary I decided to make this podcast answering each one of them. Each episode is an answer to a question.

Information

  • Creator
    Natalie K
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Natalie K
  • Show Website
    Nothing personal