Chasing memories

I never imagined that my memories of my Indonesian mother would become a lifeline. At the orphanage, Mama Jane told me I was not allowed to speak about her. I had to forget. Forgetting, she said, was the only path toward a better future. I needed to be a good girl, obedient, grateful, adaptable. Otherwise, I might be sent back.

I listened. I was too young to know there were other choices. Somewhere in those early years, fear trained me to be ready for anything. That “anything” became a new life in the Netherlands, new parents, a new language, and a new identity. People would later call it an opportunity, even a dream. But at that time, my only goal was survival. And secretly, I was waiting for the moment my Indonesian mother would come and pick me up again, the way she always had.

The adults around me spoke in words I could not understand. Not just Dutch, but a different emotional language too. They talked about the future, safety, and chances. I spoke about return. We were not having the same conversation. The last time I saw my mother was on a train platform in Jakarta. She told me to obey her and go with a Chinese woman. I believed her. I believed it was temporary. I believed she would come back.

She never did.

When I think of her now, I remember places. A street. A smell. The feeling of her presence near me. But her face… her face has slipped away. And that loss still frightens me. The fragments that remain became my most precious treasure. I held onto them fiercely, almost desperately, because there was no one else I could ask about the time before adoption. Those memories were mine. Proof that I had existed somewhere, with someone, before my life was rewritten. Because I was told not to talk about them, I hid them. I built a small invisible box in my head and locked everything inside. In ways I did not understand at the time, those memories kept me alive. For years, I believed my mother was waiting for me and that one day I would find her. Yet as I grew older, another fear appeared: what if the memories disappeared before I could?

I was lucky in one important way. My adoptive parents understood that a toddler cannot simply erase a mother. During my first year in the Netherlands, my adoptive mother tried to invite me to share. She was patient, gentle, and careful. But I was terrified. Mama Jane's warning echoed loudly in my mind, reinforced by Nyamini, my friend from the orphanage, who said she had once been sent back and that obedience was the only safe strategy. So I protected myself. I showed nothing and locked everything away.

Trust came slowly. But little by little, my adoptive mother earned it. Despite the language barrier, she listened. And eventually, I opened my invisible box for her. I would tell her what I remembered. Then something remarkable happened. I kept asking my parents to repeat my story. Again. And again. And again. They must have recited it countless times. Perhaps it exhausted them, maybe even drove them crazy at times. But they kept doing it.

Today I understand what a gift that was. Because every time they retold it, the images settled deeper into me. They became anchored. Tangible. Survivable. Now, as an adult, I often think about the advice I once received: don’t speak about the past. I know it was probably meant as protection, as a way to help me adapt and move forward. But silence can also wound. Silence can make a child believe that love must be hidden, that grief is dangerous, that memory itself is a threat. For me, remembering became the opposite. Remembering became the way back to myself.