Remembering Tam 2026
Remembering Tam on the anniversary of her birthday. I knew her as my sister, adopted from Vietnam as a little girl who arrived with a missing eye and a scar on her leg. She only spoke Vietnamese and filled the house with the songs she had grown up with in the orphanage. We'd hear her weeping while singing along with the audio cassette she played over and over for days. She had left the life she knew, her friends, the daily routines, language, customs, and culture of her people. Was it her choice to start a new life halfway across the world?
We were told that we had a new sister. We had grown accustomed to adapting as more children continued to arrive. It was never really our choice after all. Lark and Daisy were war orphans from Vietnam. During Operation Baby Lift, a Salvation Army Officer shared in a newsreel that he hoped they were doing the right thing. When asked what he meant, he stated "we're taking them out of their environment, we're taking them away from the people they know, the language, the culture they understand, and one just hopes that they'll find good homes." However, the operation was halted after a plane crashed killing 120 Vietnamese children on board. A tragic result of the White Savior Complex that drove much of the newly established international child supply market.
Twenty years had passed between the time Lark and Daisy arrived and when Tam did in the 1990's. International adoption was popularized with the same propaganda tactics from a century ago, including celebrity endorsements like Mia Farrow, who we came to call mom. As children, none of us knew the geopolitical context of human trafficking and child exploitation that we were the center of at that time. We were too busy navigating life in New York and learning how to survive the complexities of the forever family fantasy in an abusive home.
Tam may not have seen the physical harm we experienced, but she had keen hearing and did pick up on the conversations, insults, and verbal attacks aimed at keeping us all in line. I remember my failed attempts to intervene and speak up for Tam and the younger children. By then, I had gotten used to the role of the family scapegoat anyway. We got through by playing games like UNO, or playing the piano. One of our favorite pieces was Bach's Minuet in G. We'd play it over and over, laughing whenever we'd mess up. As Tam grew up, she'd confide in me and I'd commiserate with her about her struggles.
“Adoption is the fantasy world we’re told is our new reality.”
Our pain runs deeper than what was done to us that the Salvation Army Officer had articulated so well. It's the kind of pain of losing all sense of reality and never being able to get it back. More than not being able to, but not being allowed to by people who decided they want to control your fate for their own benefit. It's taken me much of my adult life to fully grasp why we struggle with belonging and feeling trapped between two realities. This is a universal experience many of us have spoken about for years.
The truth is, the reality we are stuck in is the one that shouldn't even exist. Adoption is the fantasy world we're told is our new reality. The pain of living a lie becomes so overwhelming we end it the only way available to us. For Tam, she didn't need her eyesight to see what was happening in that home. She ended her life in 2000. Before she died, I remember her saying to me, "Moses, you're like a ghost. It's like you're not even here." I finally understand what she meant. I'm here now Tam. Though I'm 26 years too late and I have to live with that.
Every day, I'm speaking truth to power, dismantling the false narratives and the fantasy, and exposing the criminal industry that's profited off our lives. Today, I honor Tam's memory by honoring the truth about her life and her death. Happy Birthday Tam.