Caroline DeaconJournalist and author based in Scotland, UK
I was adopted - extract
Growing up as an adopted child is hard. Although you may love your adoptive parents very much, there is always a part of you that is curious about your origins. This is now recognised, and adoptees today have access to far more background information than children a generation ago. But for those whose sole link with the past is an impersonal birth certificate, the search to find one’s biological parents can become imperative. Here, “Abigail” tells Caroline Deacon why she felt the need to find her birth mother, despite a loving adoptive family.
As a child, the story I could not hear enough was about how I came to be with Mum and Dad. They told me that they went to a special place for babies who don’t have Mummies and Daddies. They looked at all the babies, but then I smiled at them and they knew immediately that they wanted me. It was a beautiful way of telling me that I was adopted.
Yet I have always been aware of something missing. Mum and Dad tell me that I was “highly strung”; that from five o’clock in the morning, I would continually hit my head on the bed-head, while crooning nursery rhymes to myself. I believe that in my subconscious I always knew that I had lost her.....
I felt a victim. Someone had given birth to me and then not wanted me any more. I cherished a romantic vision in my heart of a sort of Joan of Arc figure. I believed that she stood for something; that it could never have been any other way.
At school aged twelve, I told someone that I was adopted. After that, they called me “bastard”. I remember walking up the footpath on the way home with them shouting it behind me. I felt pain, but also anger which developed into a sort of pride and I thought, “yes sod it I am”. I became defiant, rebellious - I pushed my parents to the limit. Many times Dad said, “What am I doing wrong with you; what am I not getting right?” They felt they were failing, and I would say “but it’s not you...” I always needed to know that they loved me. People who didn’t know about me said “you are so like your mum” and I wanted to say “but I can’t be”. I realised there was a part of me that was like them and yet there was a part of me that definitely wasn’t and I felt I really stood out.
When I left school, I started training as a nurse at Brighton hospital. I lived in a Gothic nurses’ home and wasn’t sleeping well. The atmosphere of the place upset me - I felt inhibited. I asked for a transfer, which I got, and immediately started to sleep well. Many years later I discovered that this is where my birth mother had lived before and after I was born. One day, I came across this big house, and thought “I know this house - I don’t know why, but it has something to do with me.” I rang Mum and described it to her. I was staggered when she said “oh yes, that’s where you were born.” I felt elated, but yet terrified... this was all suddenly very close. From then, I would wonder about everyone I saw, am I related to them? Do they look like me?
Having discovered she had lived in Brighton, I decided to search for my birth mother. I went about it completely randomly - I got all the phone books for the area and rang everyone with the same surname as my birth certificate, asking them if my date of birth meant anything to them. I got nowhere. In fact, the search took many years. Things kept occurring to trigger it off again; for instance it would bug me having to put “not applicable” to past medical history on job applications. It was frustrating because nowadays if you adopt someone, you get lots of background, whereas I felt I had just been dumped. Mum & Dad had picked me up and loved me to death, but nevertheless it felt as if the stork had dropped me out of the blue and where the hell had I come from?
When I got married, I knew I wanted to have children. Of course it is classic; adopted children want to keep reproducing; when I wasn’t doing that I was bringing animals home. The other classic thing - I just filled my house with stuff. I’m a collector, a hoarder - it makes me feel secure. In 1989, when first baby was born, I felt terribly strongly that here was a blood line. I couldn’t sleep for ages; couldn’t stop looking and touching and wondering. I felt he somehow had hidden knowledge of the family that wasn’t there. I was so protective - going out in the car took a lot of courage in case something happened to him, because this was my connection, my link. Breastfeeding him was very special - I watched him constantly, thinking “I never had this -I really want to enjoy this”.
A couple of years later, I had a miscarriage, which hit me hard - I felt I’d lost not only the baby, but the possibility of more connections. I contacted a social worker with whom I then became friends, and she picked up the search again for me. She wrote letters, but we got led up the garden path very quickly. A reply came saying “oh yes we have a forwarding address for this lady; write a letter and send us a photograph and we’ll pass them on.” This was the hardest thing I ever had to do, to write that letter. And how do you choose a photograph for someone who has never seen you and yet is so important in your life? Well, we did it, and sent it off , but then we got it back saying sorry she moved on years ago - no forwarding address. I felt I’d nearly been picked up and then dropped again.
In the end, finding her happened suddenly. At Christmas, I was buzzing and I just knew from my guts upwards that I was going to find her and find her soon. I couldn’t sleep at nights I was very happy and very excited. It was as if someone had told me and they knew for sure. We decided to go back to Brighton and we found the house where my grandparents had lived. We met the next door neighbours, had a cup of coffee and I was shaking. “Oh yes, I remember your mother.” That was freaky. A week later we had contacted her.
The first meeting was uncanny. The feeling came up from the tip of my toes and we both looked at each other and I knew her. When I hugged her I could hardly breathe. One of the first things I said to her was that she smelt right. It was as if I had smelt her before, bottled it away deep inside, and when I smelt her again it was like uncorking the bottle.
I recognised her from some inner part of me. It was incredibly powerful. One of the first things she said to me was “ I knew you were coming”. She said she felt me coming; she had felt me breeze in and out several times, but this time was for real. She had married someone else after my birth, had more children, and they had always known all about me. They used to toast me at Christmas. The first thing my half-sister said was “what took you so bloody long?”
There has been nothing unexpected. Everything that I felt was important - all my were answered. I no longer felt alone. It was like going on holiday; the feeling you get when you get walk back through your own front door. There are so many similarities between us - I knew where the “quirky” bits of my personality had come from - the bits that Mum and Dad couldn’t understand. For instance, I started training to be a healer having been interested in spiritual issues since I was a teenager. When I found my birth mother Jo, I found that she is a spiritualist, a healer, she is involved in the medical field, she is a counsellor. We look so alike - we wear the same clothes - very ethnic, baggy skirts over leggings, lots of silver jewellery. We wear our hair the same way. She wore exactly the same outfit to her wedding as I did -looking at the photos of it, I kept thinking, but that’s me! Photos of my cousins - they look identical to my children - spookily so.
After I had found Jo, I was scared to tell Mum and Dad. I knew that this was their biggest fear and I’d hit it head on... ..Yet I wanted to share it with them desperately “Oh I’ve found her and look at the pictures, look at the similarities.” More than anything, it reinforced the fact that I do really love them, and I have been able to accept them as they really are. What I want to do now is to improve the relationship, especially with my Mum. Finding Jo has ironed out a lot of my own insecurities. I believe Mum still has a fear of me abandoning her, which is sad. At the end of the day I am who I am and they did everything they could and more - I feel I am very lucky having the parents I have.
© Caroline Deacon
article first appeared in Home and Life Feb 98