Left to Be Found

Modern Love

The New York Times

Love, New York Times, Nytimes, Essay, Loss, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Redemption, Nyt

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Yvonne Liu knew from a young age that she was adopted, but she didn’t know the details. All she knew was that she had been left by her birth mother in a busy stairwell in Hong Kong. It wasn’t until she was 30, on the night before a critical surgery, that she was given a handwritten note in Chinese that transformed her understanding of where she had come from. Meanwhile, Lynn Domina had never envisioned herself as a mother — until she met Amy, a spunky 8-year-old who was obsessed with “Harry Potter.” On today’s episode, we hear from two women about their adoption journeys and the emotions and discoveries they’ve experienced along the way.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Love now and...
0:04.0	You're falling love, man.
0:05.0	It's not my love.
0:06.0	It's stronger than anything.
0:08.0	I feel the love.
0:09.0	And I love you more than anything.
0:12.0	You're too much.
0:14.0	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:17.0	This is Modern Love.
0:21.0	On today's show, we've got two stories about adoption.
0:25.0	One from the perspective of a mother
0:27.0	and the other from the perspective of a daughter.
0:30.0	The first story starts over 60 years ago
0:33.0	with a baby and a note.
0:36.0	It's called Left to Be Found.
0:43.0	I'm Yvonne Lou.
0:45.0	And this is my tiny love story.
0:52.0	She left me on a busy Hong Kong stairwell.
0:55.0	Not to die, but to be found.
0:58.0	It would take decades for me to receive her only message.
1:02.0	Until then, I knew her as a prostitute.
1:07.0	Uneducated, uncaring.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.