week 7 - beginning 15th january 2001

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monday
Did some work on the adoptedlife.com search adds and put up the latest messages. Some of the birth mothers say such lovely things. Like how they want their child to know that they have always loved them, how they held them after they born and looked into their eyes. Reading them makes me cry. I wish my mum would write something like that.

wednesday
I joined a new doctors surgery today. There's always a space on medical forms asking for your family history. It goes without saying that they don't mean your adopted family history. I wrote 'adopted' in big letters over the form. I don't want to know the genetic sequence of myself, I just want to see where I come from for real. I wish I could be told that I look like my great great grandmother or that every third generation the girls in 'our' family are born with blue eyes and curly hair. Or that I have my Uncle Alfred's nose or my mothers temper. The doctors have never said anything when I've told them face to face that I'm adopted they just looked at me blankly. On the next medical form I have to fill in I think I'll write: Adoption is my family history and it has affected my health.

There's a monkey experiment that I read about once. The researchers had 2 groups of monkeys - one group they took the baby away from it's mother on the first day of its life for one day, just one day, they were reunited the next day, the other group stayed with their mother throughout. That one day was the only difference between the two groups. The researchers then investigated the immune systems of the baby monkeys when they reached adulthood and found that those monkeys who had been deprived of their mothers for one day at birth had significantly weaker immune systems than the non abandoned monkeys.

Yes we have a family history of adoption - collusion with a society that thinks teenagers shouldn't be having sex, that a woman, especially a young woman shouldn't have a baby out of wedlock, that a girl continuing her education is more important than her bonding with her baby. Societies Family History.

thursday
I thought about the word adopted today. It doesn't embrace the abandonment, the being given away part of adoption, it just refers to being taken in by another family. So the very word itself contains a denial of what adoption actually consists of. It's a deletion of the past. Your existence starts from when you are adopted not from when you were born. You even get a birth certificate with your adopted name on it.

They changed the adoption laws in the UK in the 1970's saying that once an adopted person reached the age of 18 they had a right to see any records kept on them related to their adoption. A few years ago when I tried to ask my Dad for more information about my birth family he said he promised the adoption agency never to tell me anything about my birth family and he wasn't going to break his promise. The only piece of information I did get was when I was 15 and that was from my step mum, she told be my birth mum was 15 when she got pregnant with me. I don't think it occurred to me at the time that I was 15 and it would be like me getting pregnant now (then). I don't think I was able to identify with her situation even though I was the same age. I just stored the information away and didn't have much response to it.

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