2024 adoptee round up

Happy new year! Time to round up some of last year’s highlights.

25th January 2025 afternoon retreat: book now

Places are going fast for the HTBA annual January adoptee community retreat with Claire and Gilli. You can see a rough agenda here and book your place. Suggested donation is £15 but you can put anything from £1 in order to check out. It’s running online from 2-5pm and we’ll cover the effect of trauma on the body and some tips on finding/starting an adoptee group near you.

Book now

2024 highlights

BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour

Women’s Hour has been a dream for me for a long time. It was amazing to finally get the call, but bittersweet as well because I was talking about some very heartbreaking family circumstances rather than just bigging up How To Be Adopted and other great adoptee organisations.

Listen back to Claire from How To Be Adopted on Women’s Hour talking about a new report that recommends changes to contact arrangements (aka maintaining relationships) after adoption. It starts around 20 mins in.Also interviewed is Prof Beth Neil. You can learn more about the proposed changes to modern adoption practice here.

Expansion of adoptee peer groups throughout the UK

Groups are going strong, with contingents in London, Bristol, Devon, Cornwall and more. The fabulous Ryan in Edinburgh ran an amazing run of adoptee meet ups including breakfast, lunch and dinner!

‘We Are Family’ webinar on adoptees becoming parents

I’m regularly asked to present to adoptive parents and I always say no, until this year! Professor Beth Neil asked me to speak about my lived experience of being an adopted person and becoming a parent. This was part of a webinar for We Are Family and within the huor we managed to cover Beth’s extensive research into what happens when adopted people become parents, as well as two adoptees’ experiences - mine and Daniel Bishop who you may remember from this brillaint guest blog on being a late-discovery adoptee.

Currently only members of WAF can watch the talk back.

Anniversary of changing the Ofsted law re adoptees accessing counselling

18th December marked a year since the law change! I’d love to know your stories on how the law change has impacted you whether you’re a therapist or adopted person.

HTBA North London group Christmas meal

Sponsored by Tatlers estate agency, we had a wonderful Christmas lunch.

Before you go

Please make sure you’re signed up to the emails as that’s where we share goings on in adopteeland like books, plays, podcasts, etc.

‘Did you have a good adoption?’ and other dumb questions…

My sister and I are 14 months apart. We were adopted into the same family; me from the NCU of Southampton Hospital at 16 days old, and my sister from a children’s home age 7 months. She’d been there for 3-4 months after being with her first mother for around 3 months.

I was adopted as soon as my paperwork went through at 11 months old. However, our parents fostered my sister for a number of years before adopting her. We weren’t sure why at the time but now I think it was because her first mother was contesting her adoption. I remember standing up in court with my sister and my parents and being asked by the judge, “Do you want Nadia* to be your sister?” and I said to the judge, “She already is my sister?” I’m still not sure why they asked me and what they would have done if I’d said no!

When adoptees raise questions about the ethics around adoption, the power imbalances and the skewed narratives, the response is often, “I’m sorry you had a bad adoption”. What on earth does this mean and why does it negate what the adoptee is saying? This is partly why over the years I’ve chosen to remain ambiguous about whether I had a ‘good/bad’ adoption. Not only because it’s a reductive question, but because if I say ‘yes’ will people choose to listen to me over those who had a different experience, when all of our experiences are (should be) valid?

So, based on the markers of success, did I have a good adoption? Well, according to social services, I am what is termed a ‘good outcome’. My parents had some financial issues after the early 90s recession and we were on free school dinners for a while, but all the traditional markers of success are in place for me: university degree, successful career, happy marriage, two gorgeous kids, support network of brilliant friends, and a big house in a nice area. If you’ve read my blog, you know this isn’t the whole picture, but it’s what people look for when trying to determine if someone had a ‘good adoption’. That and whether you have a good relationship with your adoptive family as an adult.

So, on to my sister. What of her ‘outcomes’? Well, here’s where it gets interesting aka heartbreaking. Despite being raised in the same adoptive family, my sister has experienced substance misuse and incarceration. She is now a mother living without her children after the intervention of social services following a number of issues including experiencing domestic violence.

It’s worth noting that the last fact preceded the first two. I can’t say I would have fared any better if my babies were taken away from me. Can you? Birth mothers are really treated appallingly in this country and as a nation we should be ashamed of our systems. How easy it is to ‘other’ another person like this, who only yesterday was a child herself (see photo above) and now is vilified by society. Adoptive parents reading this, please know that majority of adopted people do want to know about their roots and their first families, and when that day comes do you want them to discover something hopeful or something tragic? If the former, please actively support and fund long-term therapy and help for birth/first mothers.

With my sister’s permission, let me be crystal clear about her circumstances. She went back into local authority ‘care’ as a teenager, had her first child at 18 and was a mother living without her children by 25. She subsequently became addicted to heroin and homeless. She was in prison when she heard her birth mother had passed away. Thanks to the understanding of the chaplain, she was able to attend the ceremony. She travelled to her own mother’s funeral in handcuffs with a police escort. This was the first time they had ‘met’ since my sister was 3 months old. She never got to look into her mother’s eyes and ask her what happened. Can you imagine the resolve of a person who withstands all of this pain? Who goes through all of this alone? Can you still ‘other’ this person, and call her a ‘chav’ and watch Benefits Britain or Jeremy Kyle to laugh at people like my sister?

And as for me, her big sister, I’ve had more conversations with prison chaplains, soup kitchen owners, and dodgy boyfriends than I’ve had with my sister in the last 20 years. My dad asked me to uninvite her to my wedding as he didn’t want any drama. My kids haven’t even met their auntie. In fact, I did a survey recently where I asked adopted people about their relationship with their adoptive sibling and 80% of people said “complicated” or “non-existent”. On top of all the other challenges of being adopted, we are also often struggling to form and maintain relationships with non-genetic siblings who have similar levels of trauma as us.

And what of my sister’s children? Did they have ‘good adoptions’? This was 20 years later, of course. Things have improved, haven’t they? Well, only a little. After they were adopted, the brothers’ and sisters’ relationships were not nurtured by their respective adoptive parents, and they ended up finding one another on social media as teens. Lots of emotions to navigate by themselves as teenagers, while their friends were busy worrying about things like homework and TikTok. Yet another additional challenge for the strong superheroes we call adoptees.

I write this blog post from my swanky hotel in Cyprus on holiday with my family, painfully aware of my privilege as the one who had the ‘good adoption’. So, when my husband smiles at me across the restaurant table and says, “Are you having a nice holiday, babe?” I smile back but it’s tinged with survivor’s guilt. Why am I here while my little sister is living on the breadline, trying to piece together a relationship with her children via Facebook Messenger when every conversation is a blessing and a painful trigger for these two (now three) generations who have grown up separated from one another, told to be grateful to adoption.

I have no idea what steps I danced that my sister didn’t that meant I’m here in this five-star hotel and she’s not. And why my voice gets an audience in a national newspaper, while she is confined to the fringes of society. Neither of us even thought she would live to see her 40s, but she’s still here. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and sometimes she’s not even mine, but we promised to be sisters forever. So next time you ask if someone had a good adoption, consider the nuances of that question, if it’s even an appropriate or acceptable question to ask, or something that could ever be summed up in a one-word answer to a closed question. Are you really asking, did you go to university, and do you see your adoptive parents for Sunday lunch? Because is this your marker of a good adoption? Does this reinforce your view that adoption is ‘a good thing’ with no grey areas?

And if the answer, is no I was expelled from school and I spent much of my 30s in prison, then wouldn’t you potentially learn more about what’s wrong with adoption from the second person?

 *Not her real name

Self-care meet-up for adoptees by On Being Adopted - my review

A wonderful experience with a small group of UK adoptees, including healing yoga and a safe space for sharing stories...

I’d been looking forward to Rachel from On Being Adopted’s mini-retreat for adoptees for a few months. We met on Twitter and connected over many elements of our upbringing. We both have a desire to find more creative and/or hands-on healing for trauma (in addition to talking therapies). And we're both passionate about connecting with other adoptees, specifically in the UK. 

This event was to be a mixture of yoga, which is a way many of us manage our feelings, and talking with other adoptees. I was nervous but the location - a Buddhist centre - felt very peaceful and spiritual, and the room was small enough to be intimate yet large enough for us to comfortably move through the yoga sequences Rachel had designed for us. 

Rachel took us through a series of grounding poses, mostly standing up, such as the warriors one and two, and several balancing postures. This part of the day was about an hour long. There was enough repetition of the poses to enable a sense of flow, and enough variation to keep us alert. After a series of twists, which help regulate the nervous system, we settled into a long savasana with two guided body scans. Rachel finished the session with some pranayama breathing which is good for calming the mind. 

After a break for tea and biscuits we took our places on our yoga mats again and began sharing stories. Each person talked for around 5-10 minutes and it was free-flow so we could talk about anything on our minds, rather than needing to give a linear background to our adoption. This was quite refreshing! Rachel was clear about the ground rules: everything said is confidential, and avoid interrupting and/or trying to fix anyone’s problems. This was crucial for me, as I find it very hard not offer solutions or (some might call them) platitudes. It was great to be let off the hook in this respect.

I was worried that sharing 'into the ether' with no follow-up would be rather odd. But it really surprised me that sharing in this way felt good. The knowing nods were all that was really needed! I found there were many overlaps to our experiences, yet everyone’s story was unique. It was lovely to meet some of the adoptees I have spoken to on Twitter, and see someone I met at the Open Nest Conference 2017.

I left the meet-up feeling lighter and extremely validated. Sometimes I think I’m weak for finding all this hard, or maybe I’m just not trying hard enough to make tricky issues like reunion work. This meet-up reassured me that actually it all is just very bloody hard, and we are all doing the best we can. 

Thank you to the other participants and jolly well done to Rachel for making this UK adoptee meet-up a reality. Here’s to the next one! 

Find out about more meet-ups from On Being Adopted

Express an interest in Rachel's book club for adoptees: NEW!

If you're interested in yoga for self-care, self-worth and helping with anxiety, I really like home practice with Yoga by Adriene

And if you have any ideas for future meet-ups, let me or Rachel know. Or feel free to do one of your own! Rachel has proved there is a big appetite x

Natalie @zumbanatalieuk and Rachel @onbeing_adopted