Roots are not just names on a birth certificate. They’re much more. Like any tree without roots, we might fall. I am half-Roma—Dopash, a Romani word for 'half,' marking my lineage through my Romani father's side. I know who my parents are. I know my story. I know my roots. But not everyone feels rooted—and those roots are what help you grow. They give you the strength to reach the light, to reach the sky. Roots are the silent map of the home we carry.

My father spent his childhood in an orphanage, from the age of five until he was eighteen. He always knew who his parents were. He knew they were Romani, and he knew the town where they lived. As a child, my father tried to run away from the orphanage to be with them, but he was always brought back. The story was always the same: they didn’t have food or space for him.

So he gave up hope of ever living with them. That’s a deep scar on the soul, a heart sliced with the sharpest knife into a thousand pieces—knowing your parents and still feeling utterly unwanted, unloved, rejected. But life, somehow, has no mercy—even for children.

My father was raised by strangers, inside a system, not by his own people. The system was harsh and cruel. He mentioned that he was beaten up very often with belts by monks working in the orphanage. He wasn’t adopted because he was Roma; he was seen as unwanted.

No loving family came for him—his skin was too dark to pass as white for a white family. Times are changing now, but in my father’s era, couples looking to adopt were interested only in white children. He was one of many Roma children in orphanages, left behind, never even selected for the pool of potential adoptions.

At that time, most couples believed that ''Gypsy DNA'' would show up later, causing only problems for the adoptive family. Besides heavy racism and especially romophobia, that stereotypical story was widely circulated: every Roma child would become a criminal, an alcoholic, or a drug addict, and might even kill their adoptive parents.

I didn’t grow up in the same system, or even the same country, but the fracture was passed down. Disconnection doesn’t end with one generation. It echoes. Transgenerational trauma isn’t some lazy, mystical term—it’s real. It runs in your blood. It took me a while to cleanse it. But I’m glad I did.

My father was incredibly ambitious, wanting to prove his worth as a human being, not just as a Roma. He was always the best student in school. Later, he became a successful lawyer —famous and rich. The food was always on the table. But many things stayed beneath the table.

He worked hard, built his life from nothing, and tried to outpace the stereotype people held about Roma. On the outside, he made it. But inside, he was ashamed of his roots. He avoided calling himself Roma in public. He didn’t want that label attached to his name—not because he rejected who he was, but because he knew what it would cost him. He had seen what being labeled Roma could bring in this world: fewer chances, less respect, constant suspicion. Like many others, he thought the safest thing was silence.

Later in life, some members of his family tried to reconnect with him. But he completely denied them. I fully understand why he did it. Not because of a lack of heart, but because of the immense pain his heart was carrying. The abandoned little child within him was always disappointed. You can rebuild almost everything in life, but once the bridge of trust is broken, there’s often no way back. You have to choose to walk forward, and never look back.

In his heart, he felt abandoned—not only by his own Romani family but by the Roma people as a whole. And so, his roots were severed.

I asked many times why his parents placed him in the orphanage. He believed it was due to financial struggles and tension between his parents. My father kept only one photograph from his childhood—a black-and-white image of him sitting on his father’s lap as a little boy. That’s it. No mother. No siblings. Just one old, torn photograph. The rest of his memories began at age eighteen, as if his life started when he left the orphanage.

He decided to plant new roots for his family tree, leaving behind the painful memory of his early life as an abandoned Romani boy. Throughout his life, he rejected the victim mentality and any notion of a pity party. That was his foundation. But on the other hand, tears were always a sign of weakness to him.

I almost grew up that way, too. But for the sake of balance, I was surrounded by my mother’s side of the family—healers and herbalists—who helped me see my inner world more clearly.

People like to tell adopted children—especially those raised by loving families—that love is enough. That they should be grateful. That they were “saved.” I won’t deny that love matters—it does. Family isn’t always about blood. Real family is built through presence, care, and truth. Some adoptive parents show up with real love, real commitment, and that matters. It can change a life.

But even then—love isn’t enough if the child is forced to erase where they came from.

You can’t build a full identity on silence. Too many adopted kids—especially those from marginalized cultures like the Roma—are raised in environments where their roots are ignored, rewritten, or deleted. You grow up feeling like a ghost inside someone else’s story. No one tells you this at the start. No one explains the cost of being “given a better life” when it means being stripped of your own.

When you don’t know who you are, you don’t know how to stand. That’s the truth. It’s not some deep philosophical idea—it’s day-to-day survival. You question your worth. You doubt your instincts. You build layers to protect what you don’t even fully understand. That confusion becomes your baseline. And for Romani kids, add centuries of being told you don’t belong—it cuts even deeper.

I’ve seen it firsthand—the quiet, invisible damage that happens when you’re raised away from your people, your language, your history. The adopted Romani kids I’ve met aren’t broken. But many are disconnected. They try to make sense of identities that don’t fit. And often, they carry guilt or shame for even wanting to ask about their roots. Because someone told them it was disloyal to search.

I’ve healed those wounds. But it took years. Years of digging, facing hard truths, pushing through silence, finding my roots again. The healing didn’t come from pretending none of it happened. It came from naming it, facing it, reclaiming what was mine. No one handed me closure. I had to build it myself.

When people say, “They were adopted into a loving family—what’s the problem?” I answer directly: The problem is never just about whether someone was “loved.” The problem is when children are expected to forget where they came from to be accepted. That’s not love. That’s erasure.

My father didn’t get to heal in time. He carried those years of institutionalization like invisible weight. And no one around him had the language or space to help him unpack it. He had to just “move on,” like it was a choice.

His last wish was simple: to be buried in the same grave as his father—the same father who had placed him in an orphanage, the same father from the old photograph who had once held him on his lap as a little boy. He knew the location of the grave. Last wishes are always sacred, so we buried him there. Back to the soil. Back to his roots.

This isn’t just about Romani kids. It’s about every child who was taken, displaced, or adopted without being given a way back to their origin. It’s about anyone who’s had to build their life without the foundation they were born into. Every person deserves to know who their father or mother is—not just the woman who gave birth to them, but the root. The place. The truth.

Without it, you’re floating. Trying to become someone real while living inside someone else’s version of who you should be. That doesn’t last. Fakes fall apart. There are many branches on the tree, but only one root. They can’t grow without each other. Sometimes, the crown of the tree returns back to its roots. Like my father did.