Abandoned as a baby, brought back to hope by women who look like her

Grace Lee grew up in a children’s home but memories of her time there are hazy.

She was always hungry as the older kids would snatch her food. When she cried, they pinched her and left her bruised.

Now and then, the staff would dress the children up nicely and tell them they had an important meeting to attend.  

In those days, potential adoptive parents would turn up and “choose” the child they wanted.  

Most of the children would be on their best behaviour. Every child secretly hoped that this would be the day when she would be singled out to be loved in an actual home.  

Skinny and bruised

There was something different about a couple who showed up one day.

Their attention landed on a young girl who was perpetually crying. They noticed many bruises on her.   

The couple prayed about adopting this two-year-old. They visited her every week and observed how her face would light up whenever they brought her food.

Their attention landed on a young girl who was perpetually crying. They noticed many bruises on her.   

They felt led to adopt her. The process was difficult – records showed that she had been abandoned and reasonable efforts needed to be taken to obtain consent from her birth parents.  

The couple engaged a lawyer and also placed an advertisement in the papers in an attempt to locate her biological mother.

Three years later, the couple could finally bring the five-year-old girl home.  

The renamed her Grace.

“It was a reminder of God’s grace that enabled the adoption to go through,” said Grace, whose birth name is Ho Zhen Xue.

Every Sunday, Grace’s parents took her to church.   

Even at a young age, Grace’s heart craved love, despite being happy.

Despite being happy, Grace’s heart craved love.

She especially loved worship songs like “Jesus Loves Me” or verses like John 3:16 that spoke about love. 

She didn’t know about her past. Then two incidents happening in the same week rocked her world when she was eight.

“Was I abandoned?”

On a bus ride home from school, a senior lady came up to her and asked if she had lived at Wilkie Road Children’s Home.

Grace was too stunned to respond. She remembered growing up in a confined space with other children and did not know the name of the place.

That very same week, a senior pastor from her church also approached her.  

“She asked how my life and studies were and then suddenly blurted out, ‘You know you are adopted right?’” said Grace, now 35.  

“She suddenly blurted out: ‘You know you are adopted right?’”

Question after question surfaced in a speechless Grace’s mind: What is she talking about? You mean everyone in church knew I am adopted except for me? 

Overwhelmed by a feeling of shame, Grace asked her parents about it in the car.  

“Was I abandoned or adopted?” she asked.  

They questioned her about who had told her and began talking among themselves.  

When she broached the topic with them again, they fobbed off her queries.  

She stopped going to church. There was no point, she thought, since the adults she trusted – her parents and leaders in church – would not answer the question she most wanted to know: Was I abandoned?  

She went back to the senior pastor to ask her more. This time she was told, no, she was not abandoned.  

Liars, all of them are liars, thought Grace.

She was also angry at God for letting her find out about her adoption, yet not offering her the answers she was seeking.  

Grace started withdrawing from people and bottling up her feelings.  

When she turned 12, another incident turned her world upside down.  

Unplanned, unwanted 

While helping her parents to pack before they moved house, Grace found the missing person advertisement that her adoptive parents had placed in the papers.  

It was the first time she saw the face of her biological mother. The resemblance of their noses shook her. According to the paperwork that was attached to the newspaper article, her biological mother was a bar girl who had an affair with a married man.

Grace realised she was not only unwanted but likely to be unplanned.  

Grace went into her room and cried like never before. She threw away her Bible and burned her photographs with her church friends.

She had found the answer to her question – she had been abandoned by her mother in a hospital.

She concluded that all those trusted adults in her family and church had “lied” to her. It did not matter that perhaps they did so out of a desire to “protect” her from the truth.  

“My world crumbled,” said Grace.  

Each time her parents had to go to school because she was causing trouble, she would feel proud instead of being embarrassed.  

The teenager then became her own investigator.

A classmate accompanied her to the police station to get more information on her biological parents. She gave the police officer her mother’s name and identification card number. However, all the police officer would tell her was that her mother’s address was listed differently from the Joo Chiat address in her birth certificate.

She needed to write in formally to get more information. 

She did – five years later when she was in polytechnic. She found out that her mother was listed as missing, and no father’s name was registered in her records.

The trail had gone cold and she stopped investigating.  

Grace withdrew from her family and relatives.  

She refused to talk to counsellors. Instead, she banged her head on the wall and floor until her parents and the counsellor gave up.   

“Though I had shut Him out of my life, He still answered me when I cried out to Him.”

She kept bad company in school, lied and ran away from home.

She stole candy and chocolate just for the thrill of it. When caught red-handed by the staff from large supermarket chains, she would be so terrified that she would utter a desperate prayer for God to get her off the hook.  

Five times, she was caught. Mysteriously, every time the staff member took up the phone to call the police, he would change his mind and give her a second chance.  

“Though I had shut God out of my life, He still answered me when I cried out to Him,” said Grace. 

Her rebellious antics also made her notorious in school. Each time her parents had to go to school because she was causing trouble, she would feel proud instead of being embarrassed.  

Getting Fs

In her heart, Grace knew her parents loved her, but they could not answer her questions about her birth and origins to her satisfaction.  

Her unresolved past affected her ability to make friends.

“So I became used to being alone,” said Grace.  

In the darkness of her room, she would play the childhood worship songs she used to sing. They comforted her.

In her teens, Grace usually read or slept in her room or caught spiders by herself among the trees in the park nearby.

Her adoptive parents had a son four years after they adopted her. She got along very well with him, but he was mostly a playmate, not a confidante.  

Loneliness felt normal, but it came with a sense of emptiness. In the darkness of her room, she would play the childhood worship songs she used to sing. They comforted her. She kept the volume low, not wanting her parents to know that she was listening to Christian songs.  

She strove to be as self-sufficient, not wanting to depend on or involve anyone in her life.

If she did not have money, she would steal. If she needed her parent’s signature on her report cards, she would forge it. She was getting “F” grades most of the time.   

Life became slightly better when she entered the Institute of Technical Education (ITE). She liked the hands-on nature of the curriculum though she continued failing her tests and exams.  

The motivational speaker

During her first semester at ITE, she attended a talk by a motivational speaker who was also a single mother.  

Every word seemed to speak directly to her broken heart.  

It was as if the speaker was her own mother, speaking to the young and abandoned Grace. 

The single mother shared about why she abandoned her own child and how she felt about the decision.

The speaker was very repentant. She said she had already made a mistake by having a relationship with a married man, so she did not want to make further mistakes by aborting her child.

She talked about how no parent would deliberately abandon their own child and how many of them did not have the capacity to care for the child.  

It was as if the speaker was her own mother, speaking to the young and abandoned Grace. Tears rolled down Grace’s cheeks.   

“I remember crying to God for help and guidance in my life. I believe He sent her to my school to give the talk.”  

“A one-hour talk by a stranger managed to give me all the answers I was searching for the last 17 years of my life.

“I took to heart her advice about how the past could not be undone but that we have the power to change our own future.”  

Grace began accepting herself and her past.

She decided to take charge of her life by studying hard. Every day after classes, she would park herself in the staff room to study. She would ask her teachers for help with any questions that she had. 

She also tried to spend more time with her parents and asked them for feedback on her schoolwork. It was something she had never done before. 

“I realised what my parents must have been feeling and why they could not really talk about my abandonment.”

To her surprise, she aced her subjects. By the end of her first year at ITE, she went from bottom of her class to being placed among the top three. 

During that time, Grace listened to sermons online and read the Bible. She still did not have the courage to go back to church. 

She did so well academically that she made it to Temasek Polytechnic’s business diploma course.

As she found herself slowly being able to talk about her past, she began making close friends. However, she would omit the parts about her abandonment and adoption.  

“It was then that I realised I could understand what my parents must have been feeling when the topic of abandonment and adoption came up and why they could not really talk about it.”   

She soon realised that she was actually quite a chatty and sociable person. So when the opportunity came for a four-month internship stint in a hotel in China, she went for it.  

She enjoyed her role as an F&B intern because she loved food. She did not have much of it at the children’s home.   

Smile angel

At the end of her stint, her reporting manager, who happened to be a single mother, gave Grace a special certificate to recognise her contributions. This woman bore a “40% resemblance” to her, Grace felt.

“The certificate was for the title ‘Smile Angel’. She told me that my smile drew people in and observed that I would excel in this industry,” said Grace, who was praying for career guidance.  

Though Grace eventually got a scholarship to read business economics at Nanyang Technological University, she decided to follow her heart and go overseas to study and work in the hospitality industry.  

Her decision was also partly prompted by further turmoil at home.

When she returned home after her internship in China, she found her mother sobbing in bed. It turned out that her adoptive father had had an affair and they were going through a divorce.

At that time, Grace had just started healing from her own past wounds, only to be overwhelmed by anger towards her adoptive father and sadness for her mother.  

So she packed up and left the country.

She furthered her studies in a Swiss hospitality institute and graduated with first-class honours. Then she took up her first job in Dubai and stayed there for two years.  

Upon returning back to Singapore, Grace continued in the same industry for close to 13 years, rising to the position of department head at a hotel. 

In 2019, she received the good news that she would soon be promoted to a senior leadership position. It was something that she had been slogging for and dreaming of for years. Yet she did not feel happy.  

That puzzled her.  

“When I finally got what I thought I wanted, I didn’t want it anymore. What was wrong with me?” she asked, crying in the staff locker room.  

The hotel guest

Later when she went the guest check-in counter, she happened to serve a guest who looked uncannily like her. Both of them did a double take and could not help looking at each other.  

“Is she my mother?” Grace wondered to herself.  

“Your career can change, but your purpose doesn’t. Look for your purpose.”

The two began talking. Grace found out that the guest was a life coach who used to be a hotel general manager.  

They met to chat further over cocktails that evening.  

Grace hit it off with the guest and began confiding in her. The life coach told her: “Your career can change, but your purpose doesn’t. Look for your purpose.”  

For the first time, Grace shared her full personal history. She had not even revealed it with such depth to her two former boyfriends. 

Being able to share her story brought Grace a sense of “full closure”.  

The life coach suggested that Grace tell her story to more people.

Together with the coach, Grace analysed her strengths and what she had to offer – natural public speaking skills and a broken past. She decided to use them to encourage a group of people she cared deeply about: Children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.  

She left her job and started volunteering with children’s homes, sharing her story with the kids. She gave motivational speeches at schools. A teacher was so affected by her sharing, he encouraged her to do it full-time.  

Hope and healing

Grace equipped herself further by enrolling in neurolinguistic programming and emotional intelligence courses before setting up her own life coaching company in August 2020. She aims to use her past experiences to help children and youth rebuild their self-esteem and chart their life plans and goals.  

She also uses some of her coaching techniques on herself.  

“I’m someone without any relatives in this world. That thought alone can be very depressing,” she said.

Before those thoughts can take root, she has learnt to interrupt their flow and think positive thoughts or seek out a mentor for conversation.   

She has seen the clear hand of God in her life, sending three key motherly figures in critical moments of her life to direct her paths.   

“He sent people who either looked like me or who shared a life experience that I could connect with so that I would pause and listen to them. He has never left me,” said Grace.  

That is why her favourite verse is Joshua 1:9. It reminds her not to be afraid or dismayed for God would be with her wherever she goes.  

Grace analysed her strengths and decided to use them to encourage a group of people she cared deeply about.

In 2020, Grace turned 35.  

This was the age her biological mother gave birth to her and left her.  

Yet it was also when her adoptive mother took her in and loved her.  

Grace said she has “almost fully healed” and hopes to bring light to others who may be facing similar pain or hurts. 

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This is an excerpt of an article that first appeared in Salt&Light.