I am letting Thursday pass for once without Wine and Love being my main offering – apologies to those who like lists and bullet points as much as I do.
To those who have been following my adoption journey up to now you will know that a month ago I went to view my adoption file (the record of my adoption at 7 weeks old) to those who need to catch up you can do. Might be useful, just saying…
Opening my adoption file threw so many things at me at once I didn’t know how to react. It was my mother on a page – her age, her date of birth, her sisters and brothers, what she was good at school, her likes, her height…
I found myself grasping at straws as I read that file – she was small (5, 2) I am small, she was dark, I am dark, she likes dancing, I like dancing, she played badminton, I played badminton – like this person wasn’t related to me, like I was still trying to find a way of making her be my mother, like really all that file held was facts about a 19 year old girl that once gave birth.
It all reminded me of that Friend’s episode where Phoebe meets her real mum:
Phoebe Mum: “Well, I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like we don’t have anything in common. I mean, I like, uh, pizza”.
Phoebe: “I like pizza!”
Apart from the girl in the file really was my mother. These weren’t straws. They were a mother, grandparents, aunties and uncles, a whole family I had only thought about in an abstract way before.
I once wrote that the one thing an adopted child never has is a real connection, a real blood connection. Opening up that file opened up a world of possibilities. They are out there, the file made them all so real. They have all lived their lives for 33 years without me, just as I have them.
He though, my Father, sadly is only referred to in the abstract, 19, a warehouse clerk from Liverpool. There is no name on the papers. It was ‘not given for a reason’. Who was he? Does he know about me? I doubt it. In fact I am pretty sure he doesn’t know I exsit. That shook me up – how would you feel now going through your whole life not knowing you have a daughter?
I wouldn’t know whether to risk shattering his whole life.
But my mother, my family, well, they know about me. I know about them.There is a chance we might be able to get to know each other. On the file there was an address. I looked it up in the phone book, by coincidence or design it looks like the family is still there. Could it all be this easy?
The letter goes out next Friday; the next step is to wait.
Miss S x
My stomach is tied up in knots, tied up with butterflies, the painful kind.
This is happening today.
4 months after I made the decision to take that first step, the time has come. I have no idea what I will find, how I shall feel. Whether there is anything at all in my adoption file.
I haven’t hopes, I haven’t expectations, and I haven’t a desire for all the questions to be solved today.
All I know is little steps. That is all I can do.
….and try not to throw up.
Wish me luck.
Miss S x
(Part 1 is here, plus you can read all my adoption posts via the adoption tag and thanks to the lovely people at Scottish Adoption for helping me with this)
Well, It should be time for another Food Friday, but considering my latest attempt at cookery was a complete unmitigated disaster, I shall be taking a break this week. If you really want to make Toad in the Hole is suggest you follow Jamie O’s recipe to a T and don’t make an eggy mess like me. Photo here.
Instead, as it is National Adoption week and I am an adoption champion, here is something I wrote earlier…it is a little different from the positive messages out there about adoption, I guess I wanted to try and explore how as an adopted person I really felt about the search for my birth mother. I hope though that at the end of reading it, you will feel some connection to adoption and how it affects so many of us.
…
I never though that I would find her. Actually I always thought that she would find me. For some reason I though that I would get a knock on the door and she would be just standing there.
Of course it has never happened.
I’m older now; its 20 years since I began hearing the knock at the door. I now tell other people that the search is for the sake of my future kids; that I need to find her to know for them i’ve inherited more than just brown hair, brown eyes and a short stature. Adopted children have no history, no knowledge of what could become of them, what they could pass on.
Really, if I am honest to myself, I search because I want to see someone who looks like me. I search because I want to look someone in the eye and see someone who is part of me looking back. I’ve never ever wanted to be a famous face; i’ve just wanted to be a recognisable face to someone.
In my search I have posted messages on hundreds of adoption forums over the years in the hope that she might see one, recognise me and get in touch. Knock on my door. Take this one, I was 18 at the time: looking for ——– ——, I just want to talk to you; I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t think I was thinking straight, it actually makes me seem like a stalker. No wonder she never got in contact.
I know there are people out there that feel like me, that haven’t had an ending to their search; so I go back on the forums and read other peoples messages. They all seem so sad, so many people out there looking for their missing links. I think reading the forums is my dirty secret – I’m always thinking that I will recognise someone on there, that I could help them where I have never been helped, that I could be the missing link. But like my story, I never can help. There are just too many people out there looking for someone.
We all keep looking, hoping one day we might hear that knock at the door. Most of us never will. I know, that despite my search, I have one thing to be happy about – I’ve called this post ‘search search survive’, after the Tricky song, the next line of the song goes: say you’re lucky alive.
Miss S x
The first step on any path is always the hardest.
To write that first sentence admitting that you have taken that step, well that’s difficult too.
That’s the letter my adopted dad wrote to the adoption agency and the papers they have kept for me for 33 years.
Today I spoke to the Council holding the rest of my adoption file, soon I shall know what is in there, and what, if anything she has left for me.
Then I shall know what my next step is.
…and whether I can take it.
Miss S x