Love Transcends Borders

A photo of my twin sister and me posing for the newspapers. They wrote an article over us being the most recent and celebrated U.S. adopted citizens at the time.

I have news that still feels surreal. In November, I will be traveling to El Salvador for vacation….this will be my first time visiting. This is a journey of a lifetime! My identical twin sister and I were born in El Salvador in the 1980s during the middle of their civil war. We were adopted and became American Citizens at two weeks old, flown to North America, and raised in North Dakota. El Salvador’s civil war lasted from 1979 to 1992 and claimed more than 75,000 lives. The United States poured billions into weapons, military aid, and helped the Salvadoran government carry out repression, slaughter, and violence on its own citizens. The U.S. intervention prolonged the war and created waves of displacement. Children like my sister and me were carried away by forces larger than ourselves.

The irony is that the U.S. fueled the conflict that forced so many Central Americans to risk immigration and cross the border. Now the "idiotic orange clown" targets both legal and non-criminal Latinos, while claiming they're stealing jobs. Yet, anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that immigration is often a direct consequence of war, many of which the United States has had a hand in.

Tell me what war hasn't the U.S. gotten involved in or not made a complete mess of?

This is why I refuse to let politics define my choice to visit El Salvador. For those of us adopted or displaced, visiting El Salvador is not a political choice. Clearly, I do not support either wannabe-dictators.

It is only natural to want to visit family you have never met before, and to see where your heritage and lineage comes from when you are adopted. That is a choice or opportunity every adoptee should be given, and the choice is theirs alone to make. However, not every adoptee who is curious about their roots gets the opportunity to seek out their blood-relatives or find them. I’m fortunate I was given that opportunity by chance. The universe seemed to step in.

People often tell me I was “lucky” to be adopted into the United States, as if adoption guarantees safety or comfort. However, the truth is more complex. My adoptive parents happened to be highly abusive, and I cut ties with them early-on in adulthood. I also experienced a lot of bullying and racism as a child growing up in the small Midwest ghost town I was raised in. I didn’t even meet another latino/person that looked like me until three years into college.

To grow up treated by your parents as if you were a mistake and told you deserve to be "sent back in a box" and that "you were not wanted by your real family"......and then actually meet your biological mother who never wanted to give you up but had no choice -- well, that is a deep sadness and loss I hope no one has to experience, but unfortunately many children do. The trauma and void created by growing up with abusive parents is not easy to overcome, no matter how materialistically well-off you may be.

Adoption is not always proof of luck, but proof of loss. There are two families involved, and thus, two sides of the story.....and when is giving up a child a choice easily made? Every child put up for adoption cannot be narrowed down to the assumption that “they were not wanted.”

When my twin sister and I turned fifteen, my family moved to Iowa. That same year, a missionary worker contacted us with news that changed everything: she had found our biological family. She asked if we were interested in connecting with them.

(A photo of me on the left at age 14, and my twin sister on the right at age 18)

It was the early 2000s, when letters still carried the weight of connection. There was no Facebook, Instagram, or iPhones back then....so for two years we exchanged letters and photos in the mail. Occasionally, with the help of a translator, we managed phone calls.

At eighteen, we flew our Salvadoran mother, Dalia, to the United States. She had never visited anywhere outside of El Salvador except maybe surrounding countries like Honduras and Guatemala. She stayed for a year with us, saw us graduate high school in Iowa, and experienced North Dakota (including its frigid winter). Then she returned home with a suitcase full of bountiful gifts and memories.

(A photo of our birth mother, Dalia, standing next to my twin sister during her stay with us in Iowa)

More than two decades passed without us meeting again. El Salvador remained too dangerous to visit at the time, and my adoptive parents lost all of our adoption and naturalization records during their divorce the following year.

Only this past year did I recover my documents, and that's why I can finally travel abroad now. My boyfriend and I were originally planning a trip to another country, but I could not imagine leaving the United States for the first time in my life without first visiting my birthplace and seeing Dalia, my mother, again.

Now more than ever, the world needs to see that love transcends borders.

(A Photo of my birth mother a few years ago that one of my siblings posted on Facebook)

As an American who was Salvadoran-born and raised in an American-Scandinavian household, I am a living example of what it truly means to “be American.” Our country was built from many cultures, heritages, and nationalities, and its foundation is rooted in intersectionality.

Many ask why I notate my name as “Katie A. Berglof”, and the answer is I always list my middle initial in honor of my Salvadoran roots. When I was born, my birth mother Dalia named me Angelica. My adoptive family (the Berglof family) changed my name to Katie, but kept my birth name as my middle name.

I couldn't be more excited and thrilled to take this journey. I’ve been waiting my whole life. I met Dalia when I was 17….I’m now 41 (around the same age she was when she flew to the U.S. to meet us).

My boyfriend and I will spend a few days in San Salvador, where I was born. From there, we will travel to Mizata. It is part vacation and part pilgrimage.

Again, I do not claim El Salvador as my homeland the way those who never left can. But I CAN honor it as the place where my first breath was taken, where my story began, where my family, ancestors, and bloodline resides.

I hope that in the future I can visit again. But for now, I'm just thrilled I get to make this trip. I was worried for a long time it would never happen due to how difficult and time-consuming it was to get my documents.

Though my twin sister will not be with me, I will bring back photographs, memories, and keepsakes. This trip belongs to both of us, to the deep bond we share, to all we have survived, all our Salvadoran family has endured too, and to the place where we first entered this world together.

I am grateful God blessed me with a best friend (my twin) to get through this crazy life together. I honestly would have not survived long without her. Not only that, but I know in my soul that even if for some reason we were separated at birth, I still would have found her somehow (separated twins have a history of miraculously finding each other by chance) — just as we found our Salvadoran family by chance! But there is not a day that goes by that I am not grateful for the grace and miracle of being adopted together. (c) Katie A. Berglof, 2025