It is National Adoption Week.
I intend to blog about adoption every day this week and hope to cover various viewpoints. It is one of those life issues that affects many people, rippling out down the years and across boundaries. So there are many voices – adoptive parents, birth parents, adopted people, siblings of adopted people, wider birth relatives, partners of adopted people, children of adopted people. If you would like to submit your voice, please send me some writing to mums-the-word@live.com this week for hosting on my blog. I recognise that it is all too easy to judge and that many in the mix have feelings and hurt ones at that.
I was adopted when I was 14 months old.. Here are the random memories which perhaps give a flavour of my experiences.
1. I don’t remember not knowing that I was adopted. For me, it is normal
2. My parents were some of the oldest to adopt at the time
3. My mum felt she had a calling from God one Easter to go and adopt a little girl
4. I was loved by my adoptive parents and by the wider family
5. As a child, I fantasised with friends and alone as to who my birth mum might be
6. I was told by me parents that I was chosen and hence very special.
7. When I threatened to leave home as a child, I felt all I had to do was find my “real” mother. She would make it all alright.
8. My parents spoke to me a lot about my adoption, particularly my mum
9. When I was about 10 years old, I found some paperwork and knew the name of my birth mum for the first time and also my birth name.
10. My parents had a lot of sympathy for my birth mum
11. My birth father did not get much of a mention except that there was a sense that my birth mum was the victim and him the perpetrator. Perhaps a married man? Perhaps a priest?
12. When asked about my family medical history, it was embarrassing as I had no answers
13. My parents sometimes took abuse about taking on “a tart’s daughter who was bound to turn out like her mother”
14. A girl at school called Emma H told me it would have been kinder to abort me than to “farm me out.”
15. I found out basic facts about my birth family when I was in my early twenties. For the first time, I knew I had had other siblings adopted seperately to me. Another huge sense of loss hit me.
16. In my late twenties, I traced my birth mother. My social worker told me I am very like my birth mum in terms of interests.
17. I swapped letters with my birth mother for a while. She told me about her marriage and her “official” family
18. I saw photographs of my birth mother and “official” birth siblings. There was a clear look of me when I was the same age. Will I look like her when I reach her age?
19. I traced some of my “official” birth siblings when they were adults having stayed away for years. I thought they knew about me – they didn’t so there was tension
20. I remain in loose contact with one “official” birth sister and in close cyber contact with another one.
21. My birth mother no longer wishes to have contact with me from what I can tell as she does not reply to letters. Another rejection.
22. Having my first child was huge for me – my first blood relative
23. I don’t like that my children have no contact with my birth family. That is their roots too and should not be denied.
24. I think I have struggled with feelings of being “not good enough” and “not wanted” all my life. My Dad says he knows there is a void that can never be filled.
25. Often including when my adoptive mum was dying, people would comment that I could only be her daughter as I looked so much like her. The last time it happened it was a Macmillan nurse who said it and me and my mum just looked at each other and said nothing. Afterwards, we talked about the incident and said that we don’t need to say anything because we know we are mother and daughter whatever. I find that meeting of eyes and total love from one to the other comforting now mum is no longer here.
26. In my forties, I got my full adoption file as the laws changed. Scribbly sixties writing told me the story with very non-PC terminology. To protect readers of my blog that are involved in the story, I won’t say what it said about my birth mum but it did say that my birth father was violent – another fact to digest and deal with. I am the daughter of a violent man – it is in the genes.
27. People have asked me if adoption “fucks you up”. I think it sometimes does and that there are feelings of insecurity and lack of self-belief that stem from being adopted. I think these have held me back both in career and relationship matters. However, I think we all get “fucked up” along the way whatever our story, adopted or not.
28. I don’t hold ill feelings against anyone in the process now. Well not much anyway. Only on the black cloud days.
29. Adoption is really common. My husband had a child adopted when he was a young man. My step-daughters lost two half-siblings to adoption. My birth mother’s husband is apparently adopted. We are not some weird breed – we are everywhere.
30. Adoption grief can come at strange times. Listening to Piers Morgan interviewing Rod Stewart last year, they talked of Rod’s adopted child and how he used to say he has 7 children when he really has 8. I had not thought about that before and suddenly was sobbing, full on down the face, snot sobbing, heart-wracking stuff. Why? Because for the first time, I realised that when my birth mum is asked how many children she has she won’t include me.
This is only part of my story.
I would love to hear other stories and feature them on the blog.
Hey Kate
I have two adopted brothers and an adopted niece and nephew. My brothers were very different to us, they were both black and adopted in the 70s when having a black baby in a white family was really controversial. However my mother was a fervent (still is) catholic and so she felt that by adopting black babies she would get more sympathy and attention. That sounds harsh but knowing my mother as I do now, I know that would have been one of her prime motives.
I don’t know how my brothers felt about it all. My elder brother has always struggled with his adoption but as far as we were concerned, they were our brothers just as if they had been born to my mother. We didn’t treat them any differently and both were brought up fully as part of a large family.
I often get told that they are not my ‘real’ brothers, which really annoys me. What makes a ‘real’ brother exactly? You can have two siblings that were borne from the same womb but not have anything in common and you can have two adoptive siblings who get on like a house on fire. As far as I am concerned, they are my real brothers and as much a part of me as my other siblings. How could they not be? We grew up together and shared experiences together in the same family.
My elder brother however grew distant in his later years and now doesn’t have any contact with me at all. I don’t know if the fact that he is adopted makes that easier for him, but it certainly doesn’t make it any easier for me. I realise they have birth parents out there and possibly even birth siblings, but I wasn’t even around when my eldest brother was adopted and was only 3 years old when my mother brought my youngest brother home. So I’ve loved them all my life.
I don’t think that anyone who has not experienced adoption can really know how it feels. There is this presumption that you somehow love them less or can excuse faults as the consequences of their adoption. This is an insult to all those who adopt and those who are adopted.
Now if someone dares to say something to me about them not being my ‘real’ brothers I respond with a good punch under the ribs and retort “No, just like that wasn’t a real punch”. And yes, I have done that once to a male friend – he never mentioned it again!
Thanks for writing about adoption on your blog, it was a lovely read and I’m glad people are happy to talk about it.
Hello. Such an open and honest post. I do know a couple of people that are adopted, but never felt that I could ask them about it. I often wondered how they felt though. Your post gives a great insight into some of the issues and feelings adopted people and their wider families face – and I’m sure only just scratches the surface. Thanks for sharing on such a personal issue. x
Hi Kate, what a brave post. I have a tear in my eye for you. Two thoughts: firstly, I am not adopted but often wonder(ed) if I was. I look like my mother so I know I’m not, but I am SO, SO different from her. Violence is not in the genes, don’t worry about it. Nuff said, as they say. Secondly, said mother had a child adopted before she had me and my sister. She never told us. I heard from one of her useless boyfriends when I was about 14. I know it’s true, there was other evidence. Nuff said there too. Hugs for you. Polly x
I too am an adopted child, in my mid 40’s now. So many of your feelings list hit home with me, we are a tribe us adoptees, only we know that sense of loss, even when we are found. I located all my birth family when I was 40, it has its ups and downs, but more ups than downs. There is tension on one half of the family because they didnt know of my existence and I am the result of an affair, however we are working through the issues, and the other half knew about me so the door was always open, I just wished I’d knew that, Ive lost so much time not knowing my siblings of which I found 8.
I have to consider myself very lucky – lucky that I located both birth mother and father and was accepted immediately without condition and have built bridges with my siblings despite a rocky start. I know of many adoptees whom weren’t accepted and had a 2nd rejection which must hurt like hell, the secrets of the past just couldn’t be let go for many birth mothers and they continue to live a lie without knowing how that rejection must feel.
rhubarb0 – your comment warms my heart, how you just accepted your brothers even though they were of a different ethnicity – God Bless you for that – if the world had more of you – what a wonderful world it would be.
God Bless ALL the adoptees and adoptive families of this world.
Thank you for sharing such a powerful and honest post with us all at #TriumphantTales.
My mum and dad split when I was an infant, I dont remember living with him, just a weekly visit. Come 11 years old, he stopped those visits, the calls slowly faded and one day he told my sister he had a “new family.”
Now I know this isnt the same as being adopted, but that sense of feeling rejected is to an extent understood. As the youngest sibling, I sometimes wonder if I have it easier than my siblings due to the lack of memories living with him, but then I also think I had it the hardest as the man who was meant to be there for his little girl turned his back and even when I called to let him know I got into Uni (his only child to do so) I got no call back.
Family to me is those who choose to be in your life through the hard times, my in-laws have been amazing in recent years. I guess you can choose your family afterall!!
Hope to see you back tomorrow lovely xx