36 years ago, I was misdiagnosed with brain damage at birth & put up for adoption. My mother climbed the hospital walls & stole me out. “Your only child will be stupid.” They said when they got her. She signed the papers. My mother gave me life twice. I give her everything I am.

My Mother Was A Thief

My Chinese name, 梦裔, means "the offspring of our dreams." -- a typical One-Child Policy era big name. But with the (mis)diagnosis of brain damage at birth, the doctors vetoed that dream for my family.

"What does that mean?" My mother, who didn't finish middle school, asked those in white coats.

"That means she will be stupid." The doctor said. Factual. Definitive.

No one ever told me the details of that fateful discussion following the “stupidity” diagnosis. And I suspect my mother doesn't know, either. As a newly postpartum woman in the late 1980s in China, she was kept in the dark about many family decisions. And the decision to have her baby given up for adoption certainly didn’t require her consent.

https://www.zedzha.com/blog/my-mother-was-a-thief