Olivia Maurel

It's what they are.

My commissioning mother is French and my father is Swiss.

And my mother was 50 years old when she decided to have a child.

And so she couldn't.

And my father was 49 years old.

And so they decided to go to the United States, Louisville, to find a surrogate.

They had me in Louisville, Kentucky.

I was handed over directly to my commissioning parents, who I did not know.

Yeah, I had a very nice home life.

I didn't have any issues from the outside, but from the inside, I was going crazy.

I was going crazy at a very, very young age because...

I had this sense that I didn't belong.

I didn't belong in this family.

I didn't look like my mother.

She looked a lot older than all my friends' moms that were at school, and we shared nothing in common, and there was this emotional disconnection that we had between she and I. She tried her best.

I don't blame my parents at all.

I love them to death, even though we don't talk to each other today because of my position on surrogacy.

But my genes were speaking.

I'm American.

And that just continued until I was in my adolescent years where that feeling got even deeper.