week 28 - beginning 17th June 2001
Another adoption story

to see previous entries first click here

Update - Emma's known where her birth mother lives for 6 months now and also found out she's not on the Adoption Contact Register which makes her more nervous about contacting her. She has an adoption social worker who is gently encouraging her to move forward with her search.She recently fell in love with her best friend, John who jilted her for someone else.

tuesday
Went to Una's birthday party. I was telling someone about adoptedlife.com and afterwards this woman I've met a couple of times called Trish came over and asked me what I'd been talking about, I told her about the site and she said she was adopted too! Well we just sat right down there and then and compared stories. She's in contact with her mum and to start with it went really well and they became quite good friends. They had similar tastes in things like films, music and art and they both like to write. She felt things about herself fall into place. After they got quite close she told her mother that she's gay and now her mother finds it really difficult to see her. They used to spend the whole day together and go out of their way to see each other, now her mum will only see her for a brief hour snatched on a journey on the way to somewhere else.

Trish is devastated by this second rejection. She thinks her mum feels guilty that her daughter is gay and blames herself for abandoning her. The other thing Trish told me that sticks in my mind is that she's got an adopted sister. Whereas her sister was born to a teenager who was forced to give her up (like my birth mother) Trish's birth-parents already had 2 children that they were struggling financially to feed and gave her up for adoption for fear that they couldn't provide for her. While she was growing up her adopted mum told her that her adopted sister had been wanted by her birth mother and that she wasn't.

thursday
I saw John today. Met him for lunch as he was passing through Bristol on his way to Frome. I was very excited to see him and showed it. I laughed a lot. It felt good to be with him. We had lunch and then I got upset. I felt like we weren't really relating to each other and that he was avoiding me on some level. I told him what I thought and then I didn't try to change anything I just put my head down on the café table in my arms and looked depressed and then when I dropped him off at the bus station I didn't even smile at him, I was still upset. Normally I would make an effort and put a brave face on things but I just stayed with how I was feeling. That was okay with him. I felt sad on the way home and then later felt really good. Good that I had laid my head down. Good that I hadn't tried to be brave. Good that I felt safe enough to be myself with him, to show him how I felt. You couldn't do that in my family. Feelings had to be hidden. 'Put a brave face on'. 'Smile at your father'. And I did. There were so many taboos. Adoption was just one of them. At least with John I kind of knew that it would be all right next time I saw him. That he wouldn't give me away.

saturday
Did some work and then lay in the sun reading The Adoption Reader (Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers and Adopted Daughters tell their Stories.) Something that caught my eye is the following by Lorraine Dusky in Family Reunions she writes with reference to adoptees: "Historically, slaves have been the only other group of people similarly deprived of a full and complete knowledge of their heritage, separated from their kin without any thought of the effect it might have on them."

It is a deprivation to grow up with no story of where you come from. To be deliberately denied your history by people who could tell you. To feel it's a subject that can't be talked about. My own history was taboo. Writing this makes more sense of why one of my bottom line feelings is shame. Not only is there the shame of being born in the first place and then the shame of being given away, there's the shame of where I came from. The shame of my story.

sunday
My friend Andy made a pass at me last night, we've been friends a while and always fancied each other a bit but he's been in and out of a relationship with someone. We cook each other dinner now and then and watch a good video. We had sex a couple of times ages ago when he'd split up with his girlfriend but it was nothing serious. They've split up again now but who knows how long that'll be for so I'm not going to get involved with him!

To be continued.......