The events on our southern border means it's time I share my story.

I was taken from my mother at birth because I’m the product of a crime. At the time I was born, if a mother was under 18, she had no parental rights. My mother was 16 and in an unwed mother’s home. My grandmother couldn’t get rid of me fast enough and had ordered a screen to be put up, so my mother wouldn’t even know what gender I was. My mother’s solution was not to tell anyone she was in labor until it was too late to put a screen up. Therefore, she saw me when I was born and came to hold me the next day.

I was placed in a foster home that left me laying in a crib so much that the left side of my head grew flat. At seven months, I was moved to a new foster home where I was the youngest out of 10 kids. I was finally adopted at 26 months old. I couldn’t talk or point to body parts on myself or a doll. At that time, I knew 6 words, instead of the 300-400 that is normal for that age.

Small for my age and underweight, my problems continued. I had to have speech therapy starting when I was 3. I had horrific nightmares. Instead of taking 20 minutes to go back to sleep, I would be up for 2-3 hours.

What concerned my mom the most was the fact that I didn’t cry – at all. She told me about how I would fall and scrape my knees; bleeding, I wouldn’t shed a tear. It took a while, but she said that one day I barely bumped my knees and came crying to her. She was so relieved that she cried with me.

Even with a loving adoptive home making a big difference in my life, I still have the effects of my beginnings being one of abandonment and neglect. I’ve had bouts of depression and have been plagued with nightmares on and off throughout my life. It’s not so bad anymore, but even as an adult, I’ve had nightmares that I didn’t go back to sleep after.

Most of all, I don’t ask for help. At times, I’ve seen therapists and have been very fortunate to find outstanding ones. One therapist really looked at what my thinking process was when I thought about asking for help. She asked if I thought people would say “no.” I realized that I just thought there would be no response. She pointed out that was like when I was a baby being left in a crib. I would cry and no one came, so I quit crying – I quite asking for help. It’s still hard to ask for help, but this awareness gave me coping skills that I’ve used to face that fear.

Right before my dad died, he finally gave me the photos he had of me in my second foster home. Then after he passed, I started having nightmares again. Several times, I dreamed about losing a little boxer dog which I thought was related to losing my dad. Only this felt different because I was repeatedly dreaming about the same boxer, and we had never owned a boxer. Then one day when I was in the shower, it hit me where I had seen that exact boxer. He was the little dog who was right next to me in almost every picture of me in my last foster home, and it hit me that I had been dreaming about that boxer for as long as I could remember.

The dream I had was that I lost the boxer. I went across the street I was living on at that time to my neighbors who were about the same age as my parents. I opened my mouth to tell them about my dog, and I couldn’t speak. This is literally what happened when I was adopted at 2 years old! I was taken away from my only companion at that time, and I couldn’t speak to tell anyone. The only thing I could say at the time was “dog,” one of the 6 words I knew. My subconscious had connected losing my dad to that earlier loss.

The reason I’m writing this now is because I know what the lasting effects are of the trauma the children along the border and being ripped away from their families have suffered.

The damage is done.

Thousands of children will carry the scars of what was done to them for the rest of their lives. No executive order, no legislation passed, no apology, no….. nothing will ever make up for the crimes that have been perpetrated against these most innocent and most vulnerable souls.

I cannot even begin to express the gut-wrenching disgust, the visceral rage, and the unfathomable revulsion I have for these acts. I know first-hand how scars like these last a lifetime, and these scars will last their lifetimes too.

Rachel Maddow isn’t the only one who’s been crying.