What a very touching and poignant story.

I dated a girl in high school who was adopted as a baby from a Russian orphanage by an American family. She explained some difficulties with adjusting with non-biological parents: the adoptee cannot help but feel like an impostor.

Adopted as babies, I suppose in some ways it’s easier to transition into a new family. Babies typically do not remember much about their biological parents at such young ages.

A theme in her life was to meet and reconnect with her biological parents. After playing “private eye,” she was able to track down her biological mother and her now half-sister. She and her biological parents keep in touch, but the true heroes here are the adopting parents (like the Esparzas). Without them, who knows what would have happened.