“To everyone else, we looked like the perfect family. No one outside our home knew what we knew.”

The author at 16 months old with her parents, one month after she arrived in the U.S. The photo was taken in Park Forest, Illinois, in July 1960.

The author’s parents chose to adopt her based on this photo and two others they received from an adoption agency. The author is of an unknown age in this photo taken in Hong Kong (circa 1959 to 1960).

The author with her parents at a wedding in Chicago in 1964.

The author with her parents in their St. Clair Shores, Michigan, home in 1977.

Yvonne Liu is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Salon and NBC News. She is writing a memoir about adoption, childhood trauma and mental health. You can see more of her work at YvonneLiuWriter.com.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost in March 2024.