week 24 - beginning 21st may 2001

to see previous entries first click here

Update - Emma's known where her birth mother lives for 4 months now and found out she's not on the Adoption Contact Register. She recently fell in love with her best friend who jilted her for someone else.

tuesday
It's my birthday in 2 days! I'm surprised, I had the idea it was next week sometime. I might take off to the Black Mountains, going there is a real treat for me. I wonder if I shouldn't spend it with friends but the friends I most want to be with are going to be away. I've had solitary birthdays before and mostly they've been good, I've enjoyed the chance to connect with myself. I think sometimes I choose to be alone on my birthday because it's easier than being with people. One time I had a small lunch party but hated it I felt really insecure and boring!! I vowed never to do it again. Although it's mostly unconscious my birthday is a painful reminder of not being celebrated when I came into the world. No wonder it feels safer to be on my own. I wish I'd had more time to think about what I really wanted to do. I noticed that until I'd settled on going to the black mountains I felt a bit panicky about not having a plan. So although I'm glad I'm going it's also partly just being glad I made a nice plan for myself. It's as I'd feel there was something wrong with me if I didn't have a plan. People would think I was really sad or something.

It will be lovely to be alone in the mountains I can write poetry and sing songs and walk in the hills. I can review the last year, my whole life even! I haven't taken space like that for myself for a long while, maybe over a year, which is unheard of for me. I used to do it quite regularly because I craved that time alone so much, it felt like I needed it to be able to cope with being with people. Now I'm more emotionally balanced I don't need it an obvious way but it's still good for me.

Just thought I could ask John if he wanted to come, his birthday is the same day as mine and he has even more trouble celebrating than I do. His Dad thought he was ugly when he was born.

Most people I know let everyone know when it's their birthday while I haven't even told the people in my house. I'm too embarrassed. Is that because of the shame I was born into? Is that because it was made clear to me that I wasn't wanted? That I wasn't worthy to be welcomed into my own family. That there was something so horribly wrong about me that I had to be given away?

What do you do on your birthday?

thursday 24h may (my birthday)
Una's email……..

Dear Em,

It's your birthday again today. I wonder how you will spend it?

I was talking with Brigitte last night about adoption - she found out by
accident when she was 36 - and about the difficulty of birthdays for
adoptees. I just want to tell you how glad I am that you are here, how much you are wanted in this world and how dearly loved you are. I know that will never make up for what you wanted most - the touch, the feel, the love of your mother - but I want to say it anyway because it's true. I suppose you do know it at some level. I just want to speak it for all the people who do know and love you. No doubt they will tell you themselves, I just want to be sure you hear it, especially today.

Your courage is so big Em and I want you to know that any support I can
offer you as you search for and find the missing pieces is there for you.
Just ask.

love Una

It made me cry.

It's such a sunny day I feel very relaxed. Andy rang and sang me happy birthday, its his birthday on the 27th. We said we'd go out next week and jointly celebrate. My mum rang really early….said she'd written about me in her diary which she says is like a prayer for her. She read it out thanking me for what I had brought to her life….she said I was born to challenge hypocrisy! She was crying. What she wrote was a real affirmation of me. I asked her to send it to me! Collecting the evidence!

Lucy emailed me too and I got some cards. Oh yes and a parcel came for me. I was really excited thought it must be from Fiona and Molly, so I opened it up and it was some more magazines I'd asked my business partner to send me, no note, nothing. Of course I was somewhat disappointed but I did need the magazines! Then I had a brainwave about going to the Black Mountains I knew I wouldn't be able to walk because of the foot and mouth so I thought I'd take my bike. That cheered me up Rang my favourite B & B and they have room for me tonight. I'm off! I'll be playing my Dido tape with the windows rolled down singing along at the top of my voice travelling through beautiful countryside.

saturday
I had a great time….until I came back. That was the hard part, coming back. Thought about John most of the way home and how things might have been. I'm so tired. While I was there the weather was beautiful. I kept cycling up to the top of the mountain pass and free wheeling down. It was so exhilarating I would whoop for joy all the way down and then start the slog back up…..I did it a few times two days in a row. No wonder I'm knackered. It was worth it! I talked to the hill farmers about foot and mouth, 3 of them have had all of their sheep killed. One said he hadn't bought a ewe in for 32 years just bred them from his own and now they were all gone. They were just fencing off the burial ground for them near the top of the pass where I was cycling…that's where most of the sheep in the mountains have gone. Into one big hole. Joan said what was hardest to get used to was the silence.

Anthony was born in this valley he said the day they killed his sheep was the worst day of his life. I asked him if he'd cried, he said no. I worried for him then, keeping all that inside. He told me they started culling just after a lamb had been born and they'd killed the lamb while it was still covered in blood……you might say that that lamb would have been killed at 6 weeks anyway so why was he so upset? Well I don't know but talking to him, watching the lines round his eyes and the sadness in them I just knew that he was. He was born in this valley and has been a hill farmer all his working life starting when he was a lad going to market with his dad.

There was no confirmed foot and mouth in the valley, all the tests came back negative (except one that was inconclusive) but it was too late they'd killed all the animals by then.

And there was me cycling up and down the mountain pass, flying by this massive sheep grave. They all think the government is trying to get rid of them because of the cost of the subsidies. I asked Jackie, whose Bed and Breakfast I stayed in, (they keep a rare breed of cows) how it felt belonging to a group the government was trying to get rid of. "oh that doesn't bother me, the government want to get rid of lots of groups." Well it bothers me I thought, that our farmers are resigned to the dung heap. Globalisation they call it. We might never feed our own people again. Jackie told me that in the official instructions that came round the second section said it was prohibited to move livestock without permission including sheep, cows, pigs, and elephants! As I left she said "if you see any elephants let me know".

To be continued next week.......