A is for Adoption

There's been soooo much on the television in the UK about adoption these last few months, it's driving me nuts. It's as though all of a sudden all of the taboos have been lifted about being born a bastard unwanted child (I speak for myself here) and now every man, woman, and their dog want to chat about it - or rather make a tv documentary about it.

Of course as first, like last year when Kate Adie did her Nobody's Child series, I was interested (but had of course already read the book the minute it was released for sale). But then I had already read lots and lots of books on adoption because I wanted to know how other people felt about it.

Were other people as disturbed about the whole thing as I was? Whenever I spoke to people who said they were also adopted I would ask them about tracing, and they would inevitably say, "Oh no! I don't need to do that! I love my parents!" And then they would look at me, affronted, and I would feel like a naughty child, BAD child, for even having the thought in passing. The thought of, Who am I?

I love my parents. I have had a wonderful upbringing and would not change a single thing because all roads have led to here and here is a good place to be. (I have to say all this because a lot of folks think that if you need to trace your birth family it is because of a lack in your adopted family, and for me this is not/was not the case).

I did trace my birth family. I used to visit the pages of the Canadian High Commission on a regular basis once I had the Internet, and in person when I lived in London, and one day there was an announcement that said the law had changed, that adoptees could now have their original birth certificates. Oh My. Send off $50 and wait. Oh My.

So I did. I fully believed that the name would be enough. I fully believed that no name would come, that I did not really come from anywhere, that I had no background. But an envelope did arrive, and there was a name on it. My name. Oh my!

And of course the name was not enough! It took only three days on the Internet to find a family a tree with her name on in. Three days. And from that we found a phone number and eventually we got my granny. Oh my giddy aunt!

The hardest part of all of this was explaining to my parents that I hadn't done this to hurt them, but that I had a deep seated need to know where I came from, and who I was. It opened up a dialogue that they had always allowed but that I had never felt comfortable with. I still don't feel comfortable with it, even now, when my birth grandmother and aunts have been over and met them. When I have been 'home' to Canada and met the blood relatives I grew up thinking I never had.

Adoption is a roller coaster of emotions. I was listening to a Radio 4 programme the other day in which two adoptees discussed the tracing of their birth families, and one of them said that he spent his life protecting everyone - protecting his family's feelings, and his birth family's feelings, and yet he, as adoptee, was ever in the middle and no one protected his feelings. At least that is the gist of what he said. And it is true. That is how it felt for me.

Tracing wasn't the easy option but it was easier than not tracing. I now have people on the planet who look like me - wow! - and whilst I don't belong 100% to either my adopted family or my birth family, I do belong to both of them. Inside yet outside. On the fence. Betwixt. Like I'm neither Canadian nor British, but yet I am both.

So there we go. An atheist and adopted?! Definitely on my way to hell in a handcart eh!

Questions welcome!