by Nicole Quirino, adopted from Bulgaria to the USA
My story begins surrounded by mystery. I am an intercountry, transracial adoptee, forced to rely on paperwork from a multibillion‑dollar industry, with a long history of falsifying records, to tell me about the first several years of my life. My documents indicate I was born in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, in July 1996, and nine days later, I was admitted to the Mother and Child
Home, an orphanage for children from zero to three years old. I was given the name Donca Marieva Antanasova. After being admitted, I spent the next two years and four months in an institution before being adopted to the United States in 1998.
There are gaps in my story. I believe the search begins as soon as we’re separated from our first mother and continues to evolve as we develop language with questions that our adoptive parents try to answer when we’re young. We hear that our birth parents struggled with poverty, were selfless, and gave us up for us to have a better life. We hear love is enough to complete a family. It’s a temporary “band-aid” until we grow up, and for me, that meant critically examining adoption as a for-profit industry.
My adoptive parents, like many, struggled with infertility, and in essence, I was told they were called by God to adopt. I always knew I was adopted. Because my adoptive dad is a domestic, late‑discovery adoptee, it shaped how we talked about adoption while I was growing up. But as my curiosity deepened and my questions around identity grew louder, I learned to tuck many of
my feelings away, afraid my loyalty would be questioned.
My adopted parents used to talk about the first video they received of me, a clip of me in a pale-yellow onesie sent by the adoption agency. They say that was the moment they chose me. My adopted mom remembers looking at my adopted dad and saying, “She has your chin.” The video they referenced became one of my favorites growing up. Years later, I’m able to acknowledge some of the reasons I was drawn to that recording. I often felt lost inside my body, which showed up as hypervigilance, fear of making even the tiniest mistake, and a tendency to be a people‑pleaser. So, hearing my adoptive parents say they chose me probably soothed something in my younger self. I also found comfort in seeing the nurse holding me. I always imagined her as my birth mother. It was the closest I could get to experiencing genetic mirroring. She became part of my ghost kingdom, the world I created to fill in the blanks, an experience Betty Jean Lifton describes in her book Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness. The videos and a few photographs were the only fragments of my life before adoption that I had to hold onto.
Looking back, I don’t think my adoptive parents were given the tools to understand what it meant to raise an adopted child. They wanted to believe the narrative that raising an adopted child is no different from raising a biological one. For instance, they too were immediately searching for genetic mirroring when my adoptive parent said, “She has your chin,” something they would never truly have when adopting a child. This is not an attack on my adopted parents. It’s meant to highlight how deeply ingrained the importance of genetic makeup is for all of us.
When I first entered the adoptee community, I started listening to other stories, and the first thing that stood out was the conversations around birth certificates. Domestic adoptees in the United States have two birth certificates. The original is sealed upon adoption, and many are now fighting for the right to access it. They also have an amended birth certificate listing their adoptive parents’ names. This was eye‑opening, and this is when I realized I didn’t actually understand the business aspects of adoption.
As I began looking at my own documents, I discovered I have a handful of different identities. I have a birth certificate issued eight days after my birth, stating my name as Donca Marieva Atanasova, with an EGN number. An EGN number in Bulgaria is a ten‑digit personal identification number. The first six digits represent the date of birth, and from my understanding, the last four digits are random. It is essentially the “social security number” that we call in the United States for Bulgarian citizens. And the line that is supposed to list my parents’ names simply says “неизвестна” (Unknown) in Bulgarian, and two empty boxes that should contain their EGN numbers. I don’t know if I even have an original birth certificate with my biological parents’ names, or if I will ever have the opportunity to get access to mine.
In October 1998, I was issued a new birth certificate, a new EGN number, and a new name: Nicole Marieva Quirino. The line that is supposed to list my biological parents’ names is amended and lists the names of my adoptive parents, with the two EGN numbers also assigned to them, showing they are my legal parents. The language used in the adoption paperwork makes me feel a certain way. For a little more perspective, my adoption was finalized in the capital, Sofia, and I had to be issued a new Certificate of Live Birth, which now states the birth occurred in Sofia, even though I was born in Stara Zagora. The civil case in Bulgaria, which granted my adoption, ends with the line: “In the future, the girl Donca Marieva Atanasova is to bear the name Nicole Marieva Quirino.” And finally, I have my third certificate, held in the United States. I feel that my identity was stripped away from me. And yet society expects me to be grateful for this new life. This is the erasure many of us talk about.
I spent years adapting, and I was often disconnected from my body and my emotions. I was always striving for the next achievement, and much of my energy was focused on my job and career. Since coming out of the “fog,” I’ve been finding new ways to reclaim my story by discovering my own language to describe my lived experience and becoming more authentic within myself.
I’m currently exploring feelings around my adopted name. I was told by my adopted parents that they changed my name because they were afraid I would be made fun of by keeping the name Donca. The staff in the orphanage had a Slavic Bulgarian accent,and the name supposedly sounded like “donkey” at times. They went through a number of names and ended up choosing Nicole. I was named after my great-grandfather Nicholas, whom my adoptive dad looked up to. I never felt connected to the name Nicole, though. I felt “wrong” and “bad” for having those feelings. When I was young, I tried going by Nikki, but I didn’t like that either. I never explored the name Donca again based on what I was told about the pronunciation. I always felt pulled to Marieva, and now that I understand the structure of Bulgarian names, I wonder if that pull was because Marieva could potentially be the name of my biological mother. In Bulgaria, names are made up of three parts: given name, father’s first name, and family surname. My Bulgarian name, Marieva Antanasova, is feminine, so the assumption would be that the father is unknown. I have so much admiration for adoptees who choose to reclaim their original name because I recognize the amount of self-work they had to do and continue to do. We often lose the power of choice through adoption, and searching for my biological family was one way I wanted to restore that. Our search can stretch far beyond our birth mother though. Amy Silvia’s quote, which she shared on Instagram (Instagram Handle: psychotherapist.amy_), beautifully articulates an experience I deeply resonate with:
“Searching for an adoptee doesn’t necessarily mean for ones birthmother. It can be for our birth father, our name, our language, the town or country from where we come, the cuisine, OURSELVES, the music, the reason it was too hard to keep us, what do you look like, the how are you now, the reassurance that our life mattered, the reassurance that they remember me, the look on your face if they saw me now. You see there is more to SEARCH than for the birth mother.”
My search for answers and wholeness started back in 2023. I reached out to the adoption agency to request my non‑identifying information. I waited over six months, and it wasn’t until I sent a follow‑up email and cc’d a well‑known adoptee and advocate in our community that I finally received a response with attached documents. The agency admitted that my adoption records were minimal due to my adoption being before the implementation of the Hague Convention. One of the documents I received contained very little medical information that stated I was “a girl from 10th normal pregnancy, 8th delivery.” Seeing this document helped me shift my language,and you will now hear me say “I was raised as an only child instead of “I am an only child”. This change allows me to honor and remember my siblings who may be out in this world.
As we all know, DNA kits have become increasingly popular over the years and have now become a starting place in the quest to search for biological families. With the growing popularity, it now comes with expectations that everyone will find immediate family members. This is not always the case, especially speaking for international adoptees. I have submitted my DNA to Ancestry, 23&Me, My Heritage, Family Tree, Genomelink, and GED Match. I have only matched with distant cousins, and the closest connection I have matched with is a half-first cousin or first cousin who was also adopted. The communication between us
is very minimal and non-existent. The longer I have been in the community, the more I have learned that many countries don’t authorize the popular DNA kits that are available to us in the United States. Bulgaria appears to be one of those countries. I often get asked, “Have you done a DNA test,” which ends up sounding a lot more like unsolicited advice. Without much thought, I used an analogy that I now realize is actually quite powerful: asking me if I’ve tried searching through a DNA kit is like when tech support from Dish or DirecTV asks whether I’ve tried turning the TV off and back on. Trust me, I am way beyond
that and have tried all the things.
The wider community highlights a lot of domestic reunion stories. And while there are stories of intercountry adoptees finding their biological families, it’s worth noting that the likelihood of finding first family is significantly lower. Throughout my search, I have had to acknowledge that domestic and international reunions are different. Because I’ve heard and seen more domestic stories, their experiences around reunion is what I’ve painted in my mind. That’s the problem with expectations. I’m now having to grieve the expectation I carried, knowing that what I envisioned is never going to be the same.
What I didn’t realize when I started my search journey was that I was in some ways already at a disadvantage. The handful of Bulgarian adoptees, and adoptees from bordering countries, I’ve talked to all have at least one biological parent’s name listed and I have nothing in my paperwork. It’s made the search even harder – I didn’t have the foundational details or information a private investigator would need to begin a formal search.
Bulgaria amended its family code in 2023, allowing adoptees over eighteen to request information about our origins—a change that had been in progress since 2004. When I learned about this, I felt excited but unsure where to begin. I needed legal representation and I eventually connected with a lawyer in Stara Zagora who could help me petition the court. When you petition the court, you must state the purpose of your search—whether you are seeking only information or contact. You also need the birth deed, which I did not have. The lawyer located it and confirmed that the document also states the parents are unknown. Because of
this, the likelihood that any names exist in my file is slim. Unfortunately, this is the industry working the way it was designed to.
Going through the court process in Bulgaria has made me slow down for the first time. I’m someone who moves quickly—keep moving forward and don’t look back. And in many ways, that meant I missed the processing and reflection aspects of my search journey earlier on. It almost feels like I am coming out of the “fog” all over again, but this time the feelings are intensified, knowing this is truly my last effort in the search and that it is all coming to an end with still no leads about my biological mother or the rest of my family.
Anyone who chooses to search for their biological family is incredibly brave and courageous. I’m proud of the self-growth I see in myself and the effort I’ve put into this search. When I reflect back, I’m reminded of how much trust I had to pour into strangers along the way just to move to the next phase. My search has not been easy. I’ve encountered many roadblocks. And while I’m
beginning to feel more connected to myself, it still doesn’t take away the sadness I carry from not being able to find my biological family.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit the jealousy I currently experience toward those who are in reunion, and even those who have the choice to remain in contact or end communication with their biological family. The jealousy feels wrong because I don’t want anyone to assume I’m not considering the weight, heaviness, and complexities of their stories and their reunion. And by no means would I ever wish someone not to have the opportunity to be in connection with their first family, as I know how deeply painful it is.
It’s hard to imagine what my life could have been like if I hadn’t been adopted. I’ve built beautiful friendships over the years, so picturing a life without them, along with some people in my adoptive family, is painful too. But the reality is that, as an adoptee, I live between two worlds. Somewhere, there is a world where my biological family exists, and then there is the world I live in now. The thought of never being able to merge the two together is devastating and heartbreaking. I sometimes wonder if, or why, I’m not deserving of being in connection with my first family. How do I keep holding onto hope while also sitting with the reality that I may never find them? How do I grieve this additional loss? How do I move forward without my first family? How do I crawl out of this deep well of sadness?
This is not an easy experience to open up about, and maybe that’s why there aren’t many voices speaking about it. The statistics for international adoptees finding their first families are low, and that’s worth naming. I’m sharing my voice to highlight this truth. I don’t have the answers to many of the questions I asked above, but I hope that by speaking about this, it helps start conversations and, in return, builds more resources to help us navigate this reality. And for those who are in a similar situation, I hope you know you aren’t alone. I see the grief and the pain you are carrying.
Resources
From Thailand without an identity
Finding closure when your birth family search is not successful