Finding a peer support group for adopted people or an adoptee meet-up

If you’re looking for the opportunity to meet with other adopted people, there are a number of ways. Connecting with other adoptees can be life-changing so it’s well worth putting in some time and effort to find your tribe.

First you can see if there is an adoptee peer support group near you… no need to reinvent the wheel, as they say! Groups are springing up all over the UK, which is fabulous.

5 steps to finding an adoptee group:

1. Check if there’s already an adoptee group in your area - there are several well established groups including in London, Devon, Cornwall, Manchester and Bristol.

2. Ask How To Be Adopted to check - we can find out if there’s a fledging group in your area or an adoptee who’s shown an interest that you could join forces with.

3. Advertise locally, eg the library, local noticeboards, local Facebook pages - you’d be surprised who might see it and think YES!

4. Ask your local authority if they have a group for adult adoptees. Bear in mind that social workers may attend these groups. It’s not a deal breaker for most people but some prefer it to be adoptees only. If you’re not sure how to find details, I recommend Googling “adoption + name of your local borough” and this should redirect you to your regional adoption agency website.

5. Set one up yourself! Again, you can use local methods to advertise or ask How To Be Adopted to put something on the website and in the emails, which go to over 1,000 people.

Tips for starting a group for adoptees:

• Stick to a time and day of the month if you can, this may exclude some people but it helps to maintain continuity and reduces admin on the people organising the adoptee group. Most people find monthly is the right frequency.

• Commit for 12 months if you can, results only usually start to show after about 6 months.

• Consider paying for a (adoptee sensitive) facilitator if you can afford it as this takes the burden off one person to ‘run’ the meetings. If this is not possible, make sure the person or people who do the organising of the meeting venue, etc, are not also expected to run the meeting themselves as this can mean they feel pressure/responsibility and are not able to get the most out of the group. It needs to be a shared effort.

• Implement groundrules and boundaries - require people to read and agree to them before they attend. Be clear about what happens if they are not stuck to. An example of this happened in one group where someone was inappropriately contacting another group member on WhatsApp. This is one disadvantage of not having a facilitator - these issues have to tackled by the group members themselves.

  HTBA Example meeting agreement, you are welcome to use.

  Gilli Bruce helped form the meeting agreement/groundrules and uses them for her virtual online adoptee support group and the groups she runs with PAC-UK. Of course, groundrules can evolve so it’s worth checking in every 6 months or so to see if anyone has amends or additions to suggest.

• Consider having a chat with each person before they come along to see where they’re at and if this is the right time for them to attend a group. If not, signpost to other support organisations such as PAC-UK, Mind and Samaritans. Remember some people may be vulnerable and/or triggered by coming along. In an ideal world we would have safe groups that are ‘held’ by an adoptee-sensitive professional, ideally a therapist (not social worker) trained in facilitating groups. On the other hand, 80% of adoptees have never met another adopted person and in lieu of anything else being available, it can really help to connect with one another!

• Some people will come once but not come back. In my experience that’s all par for the course. If this happens, you could ask them to send you a short message letting you know they are ok.

• Don’t discount online groups - they can be useful for those in very rural locations, anyone who has a disability or health condition, solo parents, and people with little spare time due to work or caring responsibilities.

• Tailored groups exist for younger adoptees, lgbtq+ adoptees, adoptees of colour, international adoptees, etc. A good place to start is The Dunbar Project.

  There are even plans for a HTBA sub-group for children of adoptees! To register your interest, get in touch.

The North London group, we will be turning 4 in November!

Additional things to consider:

• Consider who the group will be open to. There are several grey areas that you may need to make a decision on in order to keep the group a safe and comfortable space for adopted people. Examples include: adoptees who have gone on to adopt, people who have been adopted by their step-father, people who have been adopted by their grandparents, people who have a parent who is adopted. While there is no doubt more support groups are needed for everyone affected by adoption, it can help to be slightly narrow as - remember - it is rare for adoptees to find a space they can truly speak and share freely.

• When finding a venue for your adoptee group, a quiet space is best. However, don’t discount pubs as although not first choice for many due to related issues with addiction, some have back rooms that are free during the day.

• Ask your local authority for support with finding a room, a facilitator, funding for the admin, marketing and logistics - remember that the government’s remit for adoption includes supporting adult adoptees so we are as entitled to their time and resources as adoptive parents (who they tend to prioritise in their services).

• Be cheeky and ask for local support. North London estate agent Tatlers generously paid for the North London adoptee group to have a lovely Christmas meal at The Clissold Arms in 2022 and 2024.

• Just like joining any new community, there will be some people you click with and some you don’t. Try to listen to your gut and avoid the people pleasing and - who knows - you may find the person (or people) that ‘gets you’. Connection really helps to feel less alone, reduce shame and boost wellbeing.

  If you belong to an adoptee group, feel free to post about it below in the comments and let other adopted people know about it.

The North London group again, we love a big table!

Adoptees have been gaslit on a grand scale - by Gilli Bruce

There’s a lot of talk these days around the topic of gaslighting and it occurs to me that adoptees have been gaslit on a grand scale – and that this can create a powerful sense of loneliness. Why? Because:

We have been told that we are lucky / special / chosen and should be happy and / or grateful to be adopted!

Society has no idea how it feels to be relinquished and only sees the ‘selflessand generous’ act of adopting parents who seek to adopt a child who needs a home.

Some people (friends / family / colleagues) think we are attention seeking over ‘nothing’ when we talk about the issues, difficulties and trauma of. adoption. Others seek to minimise our feelings and point out ‘Well….you’re alright aren’t you?’

Our culture thinks that as long as we were provided with food and shelter and were sent to school and not abused – then surely everything is all OK.

There is no comprehension of the loneliness, the withheld grief and loss, the insecurity, the identity confusion, the fear of rejection and feeling that we are not understood that all impact upon the daily life of adoptees.

The negative impacts of family estrangement are a new and emerging area that is yet to be widely understood. But the effects of being in a family where you feel you don’t belong, is becoming recognised as damaging for both adoptees and those within birth families where they don’t ‘fit’.

And all this conspires to make us feel gaslit – wrong in our feelings and wrong to have them. We know otherwise, and many of us give up on trying to make non-adopteds listen or understand because we’ve seen too many faces glaze over, or heard too many change the subject if we mention adoption difficulties. I don’t know about you – but this makes me feel isolated and lonely in my situation – friends and family think I’m either exaggerating or being ‘too sensitive’ about it. The only time I feel seen, heard and understood is amongst other adoptees.

We understand that in Secure Attachment – the causes of any infant’s distress are seen, understood and soothed and comforted so the infant feels safe and therefore secure. This is what’s known as attunement – parents read the infant’s every micro-expression and through their loving gaze – support the infant back to felt-safety if needed.

Our distress was never seen or acknowledged or allowed or seen or soothed. As Pam Cordano (an American adoptee who speaks on adoption) says – ‘Their gotcha day was our lost-ya day’ so as the adopting family are busy celebrating the arrival of their child – the child is in a frozen state of loss and grief and survival terror – how mis-attuned could that be?!

So, we grow up in this lonely state of separateness, of being misunderstood at best and being maligned for our traumatised state at worst. I came across a piece byGeorge Orwell that seemed to chime with this and enclose it here. See if any of this resonates with you:

George Orwell on Loneliness

“The most terrible loneliness is not the kind that comes from being alone, but the kind that comes from being misunderstood.”

It’s the kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from silence, but from the overwhelming noise of a world that doesn’t truly hear you. You stand in a room full of people, laugh when it’s expected, speak when the moment demands it, and yet, in your heart, you feel invisible. You feel like the truest parts of yourself—the raw, unpolished, and beautifully complex pieces of who you are go unnoticed,misunderstood, or even ignored.

This is a different kind of ache, one that lives deep in the soul. It’s not about missingsomeone’s presence, but about missing connection, longing for the kind of bond that allows you to feel truly seen. It’s not the absence of love, but the absence of recognition—of being known for all that you are, without needing to filter or edit yourself to fit into someone else’s understanding.

To be misunderstood is to feel disconnected. It’s like speaking a language no one around you understands, shouting your truth into the void, hoping someone will hear and respond. Instead, you’re met with blank stares, polite nods, or worse, a misinterpretation of who you are. The world seems to focus only on the surface, skimming over your depths, while you yearn for someone to dive in and swim beside you.

In these moments, you may question yourself. You may wonder, “Is there something wrong with me?” or, “Should I change to make others understand?” You might be tempted to reshape yourself to fit their expectations, to dull your edges or brighten your colours. But even then, the loneliness doesn’t fade. Because in trying to conform, you lose pieces of yourself, slowly becoming a shadow of who you once were - a ghost of your former self.

The truest ache of loneliness isn’t about being alone; it’s about feeling unseen.

To feel truly understood by someone is to experience a connection that goes beyond words. It’s when someone looks into your eyes and sees the parts of you that you’ve kept hidden—the scars, the dreams, the doubts—and chooses to stay. It’s when someone not only hears your words but also feels the emotions behind them. It’s the moment when you realize you don’t have to explain yourself; they already understand.

And yet, in this deep loneliness, there is strength. The resilience of holding onto your authenticity, even when it feels invisible to others. The quiet courage of refusing to fade into the expectations of the crowd. You may feel unseen, but the essence of who you are—the light, the fire, the complexity—is still alive. It waits, patiently, for the right people, the ones who will see you clearly and cherish all that you are.

The beauty of being misunderstood is that it allows you to understand yourself. In the absence of connection, you learn to be your own anchor. You discover the importance of nurturing your own soul, celebrating your uniqueness, and staying true to your essence. And as you grow, as you embrace your full self, the world begins to shift.

The right connections—the ones that see you for who you truly are—arrive when you least expect them. They see beyond the surface and into your heart. They listen, not just with their ears but with their soul. These are the connections that remind you that you were never meant to fade; you were meant to shine.

So, even in the depths of this terrible loneliness, hold on to your essence. Refuse to disappear. Let your light burn brightly, even if no one seems to notice right now. The people who are meant to see it—your people—will find you. And when they do, you’ll realise that the wait, the ache, and the loneliness were all part of a journey to something extraordinary.

To be known, truly known, is to be celebrated in your wholeness. It is the antidote to loneliness.

Hold on. Shine on. You are seen, even if not by the world yet.

I hope that this piece has some kind of resonance.

In adoption fellowship, Gilli Bruce.

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

"It's harder to think about a bigger trauma than relinquishment" - Paul Sunderland on adoption

Paul Sunderland joined the adoptee community to talk about the effects of relinquishment on adopted people and why they are over-represented in addiciton, mental health, the prison system and suicide.

He also talked about a deliberate and systematic cover up by society and adoption agencies to deny that adoption is a trauma.

Organised by the Adult Adoptee Movement, Paul Sunderland spoke for 40 minutes followed by 20 minutes of Q&A.

Paul is an addiction psychotherapist with 35 years experience. Much of his talk centered around the effects of relinquishment on the autonomic nervous system. Paul talked about codependency as a manifestation of cptsd and said he has never met an adoptee that didn’t also have complex post-traumatic stress disorder (although he acknowledged that people self-refer to his clinic so he was cautious not to pathologise). He said that CPTSD should be called developmental trauma disorder. It happens over a period of time and nearly always during childhood development. It’s when our nervous system thinks the trauma is still happening.

““You were preparing to meet someone who wasn’t there.””

— Paul Sunderland

Paul talked about clinical implications of what it feels like to have possibly the biggest trauma there is which is to be separated from mother. “You were preparing to meet someone who wasn’t there and that was life threatening.” He said that those people who lost faith in other humans to help them regulate tend to become compulsively self reliant.

When our systems are disregulated and we feel threatened, we go into one or more of the four Fs: flight flight freeze faun. These responses are adaptive responses to stress and understandable in small doses in relevant situations, but they get locked in the ON position if you have CPTSD. We get locked in a state of protection rather than connection. We become hypervigilant. We cannot connect or be present while in this state.

He quoted Anna Freud: “The horrors of war pale beside the loss of a mother”.

Attachment theory says we need:

• To be seen

• To feel soothed

• To feel safe

• To feel secure

All traumas have two things in common: 

1. Captivity

2. Powerlessness 

Relinquishment and subsequent adoption has both these things. What it also has is a deliberate and systematic cover up by society and adoption agencies to deny that it is a trauma in order to satisfy the needs of the adults, including adoptive parents. “Yours is one of the few trauma that you’re supposed to be grateful for.” The lack of acknowledgment from society makes it hard to be seen. We need to call something by its proper name or we can’t get better.

When we have a so-called ‘disguised trauma’ where we are not seen and ours reality is questioned, all we can do is learn to self soothe. Addiction, for example, is a sensible adaptive self-soothing response that becomes maladaptive.

““Yours is one of the few trauma that you’re supposed to be grateful for.””

— Paul Sunderland

Relinquishment is an enormous trauma that cannot be recalled but is remembered. Clinicians say that ‘the issues are in the tissues’ which means the trauma lives in our bodies. Often relinquished babies have dermotological / gastrointestinal issues etc - the body expressing itself as babies cannot communicate any other way. This can lead to somatic issues.

Symptoms of CPTSD

1. Hypervigilance - we cannot be present, we are always on alert

2. Catastrophic thinking - there has been a catastrophe already so we expect another one

3. Binary thinking - trauma is about life and death. “Either I get it right or I get it wrong.”

4. “Unreliable witness” - Unless the other person is smiling and nodding they must hate me / their actions must have negative intentions. Unless I get my way, they win: no sense of co-creation.

5. Impaired self-care - The only part of self-care that may be attended to well is the sense of presentation or how we look to others.

6. Interpersonal problems

7. Retraumatisation - we put ourselves in harms way. Addition is one of these. We don’t know why people retraumatise.

8. Anxiety 

9. Depression 

10. Exhaustion and immune issues 

11. Shame - there’s something wrong with me (it’s a defence against there’s something wrong with them! Who will look after me!) better to think self as there’s hope you can change and get better

12. Flashbacks / triggers - a neuroception that throws us into protect before we can even notice 

There is a big overlap between ADD and CPTSD.

Codependency

When you are codependent, you are dependent on the anticipated or perceived reactions or responses of the other = it’s an addiction. It comes from two parts of the autonomic nervous system:

1. The fawn response - I manage my anxiety by putting you at ease
   

2. The fight response - I manage my anxiety by putting the other at unease and/or by making them wrong and moving the goal posts.

How can we help ourselves 

Paul gave a few tips:

• Train your nervous system as if you were training for a 10k!

• The most effective thing you can do is elongate the out breath (most of us shallow breath because we are in fight/flight) 

• Chanting 

• Singing

• Somatic therapy such as cranial sacral therapy and equine psychotherapy

• Only work with practitioners who acknowledge that being relinquished is ‘a thing’

• Do the thing that never felt safe: put your trust in someone. Self-regulation doesn’t work without co-regulation. “We get better in relationship.”

• Start to speak our truth in order to treat ourselves as valuable. That’s when things change.

• Have choice and a voice = the opposite of captivity and powerlessness

• Community peer support

Thank you Paul for pledging your support to our community. Thank you AAM for this brilliant webinar.

Watch the Paul Sunderland adoption webinar here

Further reading and resources:

Adult Adoptee Movement

Paul Sunderland letcure on adoption and addiction

Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (who came up with cptsd as a term)

Alice Miller - The Enlightened Witness 

Bad Robots, Wolves and Monsters

 Trigger warning: abuse

Hello world

Being a gay, disabled, bastard, abomination who always believed in aliens and used cannabis for a medicine for decades before getting it legally with a private prescription in 2022, I think it's safe to claim that I've had a bit of a rocky ride and bump start of a very different kind.

Although very challenging and intensely painful, it's also been a colourful, interesting and most enlightening experience and occasionally finding beauty in the darkest of places and I genuinely believe that it was the unacknowledged pain and trauma from my adoption that fortunately provided the strength and resilience that was necessary to survive the incredible misfortunes that I inevitably would and did go on to endure.

Bad baby, bad blood 

Born in the 1960s, relinquished at 12 days old and didn't stop crying until about 1972 (not joking), a garden variety standard closed adoption as my birth parents were under age and still at school when I was conceived and only just 16 yrs when I was born. My adoptive parents had two boys of their own and wanted a girl after learning that they could not have any more children naturally. 

My parents, as did everyone in those days, believed in the proverbial myth or fairytale ending that finding a family and home for the baby would solve the problems all round. Great intentions and an act of love that unfortunately turned into a dystopian nightmare that truly was stranger than fiction and had only just begun!

Not only did I not stop crying, I had difficulties being fed as a baby and often tipped my dinner over my head as an infant along with never being able to sleep and kept the whole family and neighbours up at night for years, so really, really not a ‘good baby’ because the trauma was not recognised so everyone suffered without any help, support or relevant knowledge.

Brave new world

My parents told me that I was adopted as soon as I was old enough to understand. I was 5 years old and all I remember is that they explained that they were not my real parents because the people that made me couldn’t look after me because they were too young and still at school. They also said that I was special and lucky because I had been chosen and then sent me to my room to think about what they had said. I sat on the edge of my bed and just looked out of my window. I think my heart, brain and mind went supernova at that moment, like a quantum shock that I felt as it resonated through my mind, body and spirit. That memory is still incredibly vivid because the intensity of loneliness that I felt was so profound. One of my two older brothers came in my room, sat beside me on my bed, reached his arm out and softly said “its ok, you will always be my sister”, unfortunately, because his skin complexion was fairer than mine, his blue veins stuck out and looked like wires under his skin, so of course, I thought he was a robot and let out a sudden and blood curdling scream that was probably heard in Watford. I think my brother may have run out of the room at that point and probably screamed himself! I don’t remember anything more, to this day.

I did have an infant inkling that something was wrong as I started to run away quite literally as soon as I could walk. A runaway and as a toddler, just round the block and found at the shops more often than not, I ran away from primary school and rather proud to of gotten over such a high gate at such a young age, even the teachers were impressed with that one and then at age 10, I managed to get all the way to London and all I got for that was a severe telling off by my parents and the police, can’t say that it helped even though a social worker visited afterwards but I was not allowed alone in the room with her at home and I was full of too much toxic shame to contact them afterwards and unfortunately, the amazing Dame Esther Rantzen’s ‘childline’ came too late for me as I was a teenager by then and I really didn't think anyone would or could believe me.

Doodle bugs and apple crumble

Despite a rather turbulent and toxic relationship with my adoptive mother, we did love each other in our own way and did have our moments, in between rows and general merry hell, I was one of the few people who could make her laugh, which indeed was an accomplishment in itself and provided moments of much needed connection, for us both. Although we were diametrically opposed on all levels and being a formidable character I was terrified of her but she did have a very decent side with impossibly high standards, which I now appreciate, she kept impeccable homes and immaculate gardens, she was well educated and had a good job and was very well spoken and presented. She also had a harsh and intensely strict upbringing that would have made ‘Nora Batty’ shake in her boots and she survived the blitz and the harrowing post war times that are unimaginable to me and with no support, so I can see why she couldn't cope with me being afraid of the hoover when I was little after dodging doodlebugs at the same age and found me so very difficult from the off.

I remember that she told me about the strange whistling sound that the doodlebug bombs made when they were raining down from the London sky and knowing when and roughly where they were going to hit due to them falling silent just before impact. I still cannot imagine how terrifying that must have been for the adults let alone the children and then not knowing if your home or school etc had been hit until you re-emerge from the underground after the bombing raid and find out!

She was traditional in every way and her apple crumble was superb and always served with proper custard of course, none of that instant fandangled stuff, whatever next and not on the dinner table, alongside elbows! My father always said “all joints on the table will be calved”. He was also quite reassuringly terrified of her at times himself and yes, he survived the blitz but as the running family joke goes, because he had an Anderson Shelter in his back garden, he was the posh one and didn't get much sympathy even though it really was just a hole dug out of the lawn with a piece of corrugated metal over the top and also completely useless in the winter or rain, so under the dinning table against a wall or under the stairs indoors for most of it anyway!

Pole position for Pa

Being a tomboy and unable to relate to anything feminine and because of his calm and fair nature, I got on with my adoptive father better than anybody else and it did cause a few problems for everyone but the family dynamics were rather complex as ever and for most families in general as well of course, so no surprises there. He was not popular when sticking up for me on occasions and also got into a lot of trouble himself with his impulsive humour and antics which to be honest were probably fuelled further due to an environment of constant criticism and toxic atmospheres, he was indeed a constant mediator within a symphony of emotional chaos, which was indeed mainly anger. Consistently blaming the dog for his flatulence really didn't help matters either but was indeed utterly hilarious on every occasion.

The jelly incident of 83 is a classic example when an impromptu physics experiment alchemised into pudding hellfire, basically my father couldn't resist as the jelly was fascinatingly loose because it had not set properly (not that anyone dared to complain), so using just pure suction rather than putting the spoon in his mouth, the jelly flew in a tiny lime green and rather impressive vortex, straight off the spoon and into his mouth without spilling a drop. My mother went from ballistic to nuclear in slightly less than the speed of light or maybe a nano second, there was no time to calculate. This lead to the banishment of jelly until two decades later with a large bowl of strawberry jelly (perhaps raspberry, I didn't have the courage to go near it) for the ruby wedding anniversary and nothing since up until and including their diamond wedding anniversary another two decades later, thankfully, that one was at a restaurant and no jelly on the menu, phew!

My lifelong love and insane enthusiasm for motor sport, motorbikes and racing came from my father. I am super crazy bonkers about electric powered vehicles and new classes of racing as they evolve also and with such passion. It feels like it's in the blood but perhaps as far as I know maybe it's in the nurture and I am not complaining as I feel like I am a bit of a cocktail, well shaken but sometimes stirred and always my own unique bitter-sweet blend.

Never the twain shall weep

As for my two brothers I was the most unlikely sister imaginable and a frightfully noisy one to say the least. Misunderstood and so very different we struggled to relate to each other and I was obviously a nightmare at times and this was a barrier because they managed to ‘toe the line’ and were sensible with me being the wild child in comparison but not by today's standards I may add, nothing bad or nasty I was just perceived as naughty, cheeky and yes, a bit much compared to the norm in many ways.

They had a lot to deal with and the world was not as friendly towards gay sisters compared to married or hetrosexual ones, plus I walked a very different path with the invisible disability of chronic pain even though I had surgery on my lower spine twice in my lifetime as well as my otherness. I went off to pubs and clubs, liked weird music, motorbikes and moved home about 19 different times over my lifetime, to date, not normal and not stable but I never ended up in trouble or the wrong side of the law either as I am quite respectable in the most important ways and never forgot the standards that I was raised with (well, most of the them). Ok yes, maybe a few parking fines, a bit of speeding and the wacky baccy but hardly the crime of the century at any given moment.

My brothers did not escape from the restrictive conditioning of the times and mother of course, unhappy  experiences and effects from the generational trauma no doubt as well as their own fears and insecurities to say the least. But they fared better and have great careers and yes impeccable homes and gardens where relevant and well educated, well presented etc, sound familiar! It's quite remarkable considering all the stigma and despite our differences and challenges, including resentments and limitations within our relationships that we are all still in contact and polite to each other.

Born free and a bit wild

It's no wonder that my favourite film as a child was ‘Born Free’ the true story of Elsa the lion who was orphaned and rescued by a couple in Kenya and then sadly were forced to be released back into the wild against the owners will, but she survived despite being domesticated and continued to visit on many occasions over the years, even with her cubs. I guess it resonated so very much with me because I felt a bit wild myself, being brought up by strangers and having no contact or knowledge of my birth family, so the upside of not truly belonging anywhere for me was the sense of freedom, wild and free just like Elsa the lion but also to have such a strong attachment and rare bond between humans and a lion is incredible and therefore so very special and I guess feeling so alienated and lonely it made any connections that I had even more important and special for me. Not forgetting of course the wonderful theme tune, I still find it so moving and beautiful to this day.

I can now understand at a much deeper level why this film touched me so very much as it's all about freedom, wilderness, wildness and bonding, these days I listen to the theme tune in my car at full volume, windows down and without shame, like a true old fart, it’s a wonderful rush and still evokes such a happy, wild feeling of aspiring freedom, right up until I get stuck in a traffic jam and my wonder-bubble is truly burst and reality smacks me in the chops again.

Schools out and ouch

Secondary school was less than productive and I left with 3 rubbish CSE’s but a whole load of painful but useful human experience, ultra alienation, extra inferiority, more toxic shame, how to skive off and learn about alcohol, drugs and great music, to name a few basics. At 11 years, the first year as it was back then, I was sent for the cane, which the girls received on the hands, for smoking, it hurt but I didn't cry and yes it stung like, well being whacked with a stick, but I didn't cave in, I am used to punishment and don't like to be beaten when I am beaten. When I got the cane again in the second year for smoking, I asked if they would not inform my parents this time as I received a bigger punishment for it at home, they were good and didn't send the letter. In the third year I got the cane again, yup, smoking, again, no tears or letter, this time. Finally in the 4th year, when sent for the cane again, yup, smoking, I remember the deputy headmistress asked if I was going to stop smoking and I replied “No Miss” she then stated that there was no point in caning me again as it simply hadn't worked. I thereby quite unintentionally declared and proved beyond all doubt that corporal punishment was absolutely ineffective and completely pointless, thankfully it was banned a few years later and many years too late as the boys received it across their backsides and could and did on many occasions cause damage to the reproductive organs as well as the emotional damage for all.

I was teased now and then because of my adoption and excluded from a childcare lesson on adoption and fostering also, as well as being bullied but standing up to and befriending the worst bully, as she was being bullied at home also, it works both ways, another non curriculum lesson that I appreciated. Whenever I did speak out or had an inquiry or emotional need concerning my adoption or birth family it was always squashed with that old favourite ‘You’ve got a chip on your shoulder’ followed by the obligatory, 'you're so lucky and where would you be if you weren't adopted? Also of course ‘you can't miss what you never had’ and ‘you were too young to remember’? I disagree, considering I did, and I actually think that not getting what you needed makes you miss and want it even more!

I would now say that it's not just a chip on the shoulder but a whopping and stomping giant potato with an almighty gravitational pull on my heart that's a stronger energy than the gravitational pull that's keeping my feet upon this Earth at times and yes I wouldn't have these problems to feel so lucky about if I had not been relinquished and adopted in the first place, in fact I couldn't agree more!

I ended up getting expelled from school, in the final year a few months before I was due to leave anyway because I continued to wear trousers and my Parker after an ultimatum with the deputy headmaster. I was a mod in those days and always having been a tomboy, the modette lifestyle didn't suit me at all and I couldn't bear to wear skirts and dresses at the best of times. I felt like a man in drag and found it unbearable. I didn't tell my parents and pretended to go to school every morning as I was well practised after all.

Bad robots, wolves and monsters

I continued through life with my own educational system which was to learn how to survive and navigate around bad robots, wolves and monsters of the human variety and then eventually discovered further education as an adult and to be honest it was the best time for me to learn anyway and a whole lot easier to manage than school.

I felt like a robot that is programmed and conditioned to never complain or hurt others, stand up for myself or make any demands and due to the adoption issues I as many have fallen prey to victimhood at times and had to negotiate and navigate amongst bad robots, wolves and monsters and never feeling good enough to be worthy of nice people. Bad robots mean well but they don't have the lived experience to see through the bullshit and hurt you without knowing and without intention, wolves will see your kindness as weakness and hurt you while walking away laughing at you every time and well, we all know what a monster is and abuse happens in many forms and in many extremes, not always hidden and often by the nearest and dearest themselves.

The Abyss 

Philosophy rocked my boat and in a good way, as Nietzsche said, ‘if you stare into the abyss…the abyss stares back’. This really resonated for me and it seems like a wonderful analogy for the journey and mystery of life for an adoptee, feeling dazed, lost, confused, constantly searching for answers with all encompassing self-reflection and analysis, whilst navigating through our overly complex lives and trying to find a reality that I could understand and that made sense. The darkness of depression can be all consuming at times, devouring all the positivity but still trying to avoid the primal wound that's lurking in the depths and always swallowed me up in the end. With deep rooted and overwhelming feelings of loss, intense loneliness, inferiority, obliterated self worth, guilt, shame and much confusion around identity and purpose. At my worst I literally feel light years away from love and that I truly do not belong because I was never supposed to have been here, a profound logical truth that I could never deny, and as for the fear, I felt it to some degree, everywhere and in every cell in my body, it felt inescapable and a natural biological state because I am just a big baby and can't cope like normal people and it was just another secret, why not, at least this secret gave me some control.  

My Primal Wound 

There are not enough words in any language to describe the unbearable pain of the primal wound. Once triggered it is a vast and bottomless hell pit of all the most negative aspects and emotions that the human mind can produce, it sucks you down and buries you under the weight of every single wound that you have ever suffered, like a human fruit machine, lighting up and hitting every jackpot of trauma, paying out an ever increasing weight of, loss, heartbreak and despair, loneliness, rage and fear. It destroys all the positivity, meaning and self worth and then when there is nothing left inside to feel at all, its presence still leaves a heavy, ugly worthless and guilt riddled shadow just to keep you pulverised, let alone broken. 

The only thing that pulls me out, every time, is simply every kind word anyone has ever said to me and quite a few, wonderful, deep, astute and profound quotations from an awry of inspirational people, past and present. It is only the power of the mind and the power of good that people can do along the way that can help because there are no mental ledges, lifeboats, ropes, floats, steps or anything in a void like that which can pull you out or even stop you falling further, just words, but words have power, much much power and for me the ones that pulled me out more times than any were the ones spoken to me at 17 yrs by a wonderful senior psychologist, Sue Kerfoot, and she said, and I quote, there is no such thing as a ‘bad baby’! That one saved me many times and all the kind things that have ever been said to me I am truly thankful for and the strength and courage that it took to cope I could never truly express just how crucial they have been, again there really are not enough words in any language for that one apart from the love reached no bounds and I am only here because of them all, however small, however casual, and sometimes, yes, however drunk or high, kind words always have a huge and lasting impact.

The adoption fog

 I like the term coming out of the fog as for me it serves as a great visual and tangible analogy that helped me to break free from the enforced and naive narrative that adoption apparently fixes all and the unrealistic expectations that were impossible to live up to for all involved. This put me in the position of being seen as privileged and having to feel grateful, because I was chosen, lucky and special, so the obligation and responsibility of having to appear happy otherwise the adoption wouldn’t be successful and it would be all my fault, was a huge burden that weighed heavily and with a massive guilt trip just for good measure. I also lived with such an insurmountable fear of rejection that I always and often ended up getting rejected anyway, and still do sometimes.

Birth mother and beautiful enigma 

My birth mother was only 15 when she fell pregnant and of course with no contraceptives available back in those days it was a classic love baby scenario where the kids had a kid and she was only just 16 years by a few days at the time of my birth. The world was a different place of course in the 1960’s it was openly misogynistic, racist, homophobic and where children were supposed to be seen and not heard and expected only to talk when spoken too, practically dickensian by today's standards, and my birth parents had broken the law by having sex under the legal age of consent, it's no wonder they ended up in so much trouble and strife. I was not named at birth as it was thought that it would be nice for my adoptive parents to choose a name rather than have it changed. Although well intended, I always had secret mixed feelings about this and couldn't help but wonder what name I would have been given.

My birth mother was too far gone in the pregnancy when abortion was legalised that very year so it was decided that if I was a boy I would be kept and raised by my maternal grandmother but I popped out female so adoption was the only other option. My adoption was however contested by my birth fathers family at the time as they wanted me to be raised by my paternal grandmother but they were deemed unfit for reasons that they would not have been today and lost.

Secret Sherlock and a little magic

It took two attempts by two different social services in neighbouring counties to get my birth records, even though I already knew some information after galavanting to the London records offices as soon as I was 18 years, like a private detective going undercover and thankfully not needing to be a genius either with no DNA in those days and no help (although it's still far from easy these days and for many reasons). I did beforehand, ask my adoptive family if they wanted to be involved  as I felt it was disrespectful to search for my birth parents in secret but they didn't agree and thought I was being selfish and could hurt a lot of people unnecessarily, and although it was unsupportive, they genuinely thought it was the wrong thing to do but of course the not knowing was unbearable and my whole identity was affected and fragmented, I felt lost and void of the most essential aspects of self, to say the very least. I never spoke to my adoptive family about it again and they never asked.

I used the social services mediation services and although my birth mother was not able to have any contact (for understandable reasons) I did write to my maternal grandmother for many years, just over two wonderful decades, a distant connection that was never meant to be, so special and as she said, writing harms no one and we have a right to a relationship as I was her grandchild. It was in secret as that's just the way things were and it was safer for everyone emotionally for a multitude of reasons. We even met on a few occasions after many years, with my secret great uncle 006 (not 007 but a secret agent of love), whom I had an annual and lengthy new year chats with on the phone for many years and in many different phone boxes until I finally got a landline, a most wonderful way to start any year. I also met one of my aunts and I even got to meet my birth mother on one occasion after asking to meet me, which was the only way and where the impossible became possible, even if for just one beautiful day. Quite incredible and yes all in secret for the main part but because of love, protection, fear and so many complex circumstances but worth every moment.

Reunion city blues

Yes this is a tribute to the wonderful adoptee, Debra Harry (Blondie)

I was also lucky to have a reunion with my birth further getting in contact when I was 40 years old. I wrote 2 identical letters to two different house numbers in the same street as I couldn't make out the number clearly on the birth records. I wrote the letters and posted them on my birthday as it was the only day of the year that I didn't feel guilty or ashamed about thinking of my birth family and I knew if I left it until the next day I probably would not have posted them.  

My Birth father had emigrated abroad about a year after my birth but I did get to meet everyone in the family over the course of a couple of years and all though we didn't remain in contact, I think that we are all better off for having met and the pain of living with not knowing for all who knew, was at last, finally over and again in secret for the most part with me but nothing short of a miracle in reality.

My most significant and fondest memory of my birth father was sitting on Southsea beach and asking him as to why massive and very heavy metal ships don't sink?  I just never understood it! Being a yachtsman, he explained the buoyancy principle perfectly, basically if the air underneath is always bigger than whatever is on the top, anything should float! Not only a wonderful father daughter moment and gift of knowledge but that experience lifted me up and left a soft fluffy cloud of love and happiness in my heart forever.

So I guess I didn't do too bad at all for a closed adoption, it was so important for so many and I am happy and better off for having the contact, lasting or otherwise and just in the nick of time for my paternal grandmother as she had cancer and thankfully, didn’t die never knowing what happened to her first grandchild as it was the only thing that she couldn't find closure or peace with. I went to her funeral and they even put my photo in her coffin with all the other family members, a magical and special goodbye, because it was never meant to have been possible to have ever met in the first place, we were exceptionally lucky. 

Finding peace with Nemo

And finally after a lifetime of searching for sense, reason and purpose to all the pain and injustices that my adoption and relinquishment created for everyone involved at some degree or point, unwittingly or otherwise, is that, every living thing on planet Earth is here for a reason and that reason is that they are supposed to be here, otherwise they wouldn’t exist in the first place. I have to learn to incorporate and wholly accept this simple but solid logical truth, we all deserve to belong and find home in any place and anything and with anyone that's suitable and to feel truly safe, it's just human nature.

Even my ego knows, logic dictates that we can’t change the laws of the universe and everything within it! So I just want to feel part of it moving forward and embrace the rest of my life as the best of my life while continuing to shed as many narcissistic shackles, remnants of utter emotional hell and free myself from the mental cages, prisons and a few mighty dungeons, gaining as much inner peace as possible, as this is freedom, real freedom, so bon voyage and may you all find a mighty beautiful and super sturdy mental ship to sail on through the choppy turbulent waters and vast, powerful oceans of life and I hope you find a few desert islands and a slice of paradise or two along the way because we all, truly deserve it and life is the greatest adventure that the cosmos ever created, even for the aliens.

Much love xx

Read Helen’s previous blog Flying Above The Adoption Fog

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

Claire’s 2023 round-up for adoptees

This year was a more mellow one for Claire and the team. Claire experienced burnout after trying to make How To Be Adopted into a registered company / charity in 2022 and had a bit of a crash after the high of the Guardian article.

However, there were lots of great things going on in adopteeland, which are listed here in no particular order!

• We changed UK law forever!

The law requiring therapists to be registered with Ofsted has been scrapped. This means any therapist can see you, but it’s still worth checking their training and experience. Well done to everyone who got this to public consulation!

For more campaigning, follow the Adult Adoptee Movement.

• Claire spoke on identity

Thanks to Beth Neil and Julie Young for asking me to speak about identity and how adoptees are being failed. The feedback was brilliant. My bit starts from 12:47 mins.

• Amazing film Return to Seoul

If you haven’t seen Return to Seoul yet, I highly recommend it. So different from films like Juno and Lion. I saw it with a very good adoptee friend of mine and we were so happy that it was *painfully* realistic.

Half a mile done for Live Unlimited, do check out this Barnet-based charity!

• Claire swam the Serpentine

Half a mile boshed for Live Unlimited, a charity who help care experienced people with driving lessons, interview skills, etc. Thanks to everyone who sponsored me.

COMING UP IN 2024

• Gilli and Lara’s next retreat

In June, Gilli and Lara hosted their first adoptee retreat. Absolute legends! And there’s another retreat happening in 2024…

• Zara Phillips’ new film

Zara’s one-woman show Somebody’s Daughter has been adapted for film and is out very soon! Follow Zara to find out more

• 20th Jan half-day HTBA event

Gilli and I are excited to share some of what’s worked for us, specifically around co-dependency and regulation. It’s also a chance to connect with other adoptees in the break-out rooms. Book now

Claire got a puppy! Don’t worry, we talk about Nancy’s first mum, Coco, all the time ;)

NO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!! - guest blog from adoptee Angela

Does the thought of Christmas send your emotions into your stomach where it lurches and churns?

Today is December 01st, and despite the fact that my bestest friends know I do not ‘like’ Christmas they still insist ‘oh you must come to us – maybe just Boxing Day’. The thought is so incredibly kind but unintentionally it makes me feel downright miserable and a touch guilty that I don’t just buckle up and fake it till I make it.

I thought at the grand age of 56 and three quarters that I would try to explain how I feel and why.

As an adoptee this incredibly invasive time of year with ‘happy families’ being pushed at you left, right and centre is difficult. I even asked the lady at the petrol station to turn off her Christmas music – yes I know – bah humbug!

Friends and family do try and be supportive and understanding, but they are not quite sure of what or why. There  is always an invitation there hanging in the air in the event that you make a ‘miraculous’ recovery from the morose and melancholy which December is guaranteed to bring.

In essence, I said, Christmas Day is the acknowledgment of a loss for me, a deep seated and familiar grief that I am not right. I am not right because I have always been with the wrong people. Loving people but wrong people. My body knows it as the melancholy seeps in and I feel a deep desire to wallow and enter that place where my loss is felt the most. I tend to it and acknowledge it and – finally – I know that it is okay to visit this place where all the sorrow lives to honour my loss fully and completely.

By New Year the damage which Christmas has done starts to dissipate somewhat– like a breath being let go. New Year means new possibilities. Some room for optimism again and looking forward rather watching myself drag around the sorrow of the past. The optimism is a different part of me which has been dormant during the festive season, but it is a breath of fresh air to help re-charge and balance the up and down nature of the deep seated and primal emotions I lug around.

After this explanation my friends were so very kind and understanding. I don’t know, but I think they feel like they can help me feel better but not ‘missing out’. But missing it is the point.

So in our house December 25th will consist of a nice long doggie walk, and then lots of marmite toast and tea in front of a plethora of 007 films – with not a Christmas advert in site – hoorah!!

Enjoy your season of wallowing.

Angela R.

Image: Tim Gouw via Unsplah @punttim 

Adopted……………And then what? by Gilli Bruce

Through most of my adopted life I thought that all my difficulties were rooted in the single issue of being an adoptee. Therapy helped me to uncover the aspects of adoption that created the insecurity, the anxiety and the people-pleasing strategies I’d used in a subconscious bid to stay safe. All done I thought! ‘I get it – adoption is childhood attachment trauma, I understand – we’re all done here……onwards and upwards!’

Except……..it wasn’t all done at all. I know now that the adoption itself does indeed create a set of painful wounds that adoptees share and may come to recognise as a common ground.

We come to understand:

• The loss and grief that being separated from a birth mother generates.

• The fractured identity.

• The sense of not really belonging to our family because we can’t see ourselves in any of the faces around us.

• Genetic differences.

• The messages we received and the messages we didn’t receive - and what our younger self made of those messages in the form of beliefs about our self and our relinquishment.

• The damage to self-perception and our sense of secure attachment.

• The impact on relationships of all kinds.

And many more nuanced impacts that we could add to this list.

However – I know several adoptees who seem to be largely OK with being adopted, who seem to have been less disrupted by the adaption that can come with adoption.

On further enquiry, these less disrupted adoptees report:

• Very loving parents who were consistently affectionate and warm.

• An openness to conversations around their adoption so adoption didn’t become a taboo subject.

• Parental attunement to emotions and a willingness to understand feelings about adoption.

• The delivery of enough reassuring messages and behaviours to develop a sense secure attachment.

• Good enough parental management of teenage turbulence to sustain a loving, family connection.

These were just a few aspects of growing up adopted that had allowed the ‘OK adoptees’ to feel less disrupted by adoption than some of us have, and maybe still do.

The adoptees I work with and talk with, generally don’t have that experience – there wasn’t ENOUGH attuned, loving or consistent parenting to outweigh the wounds. There weren’t ENOUGH loving behaviours or demonstrations of safety and security to quell anxieties and make us feel that we belonged. There weren’t ENOUGH open conversations about adoption, feelings or questions so identity was fractured and ephemeral.

Maybe we:

• Were transracially adopted – so obviously ‘didn’t belong’.

• Were adopted from another country or culture so felt a bigger sense of not belonging.

• Were a lonely, only child adoptee.

• Were adopted into a mix of adopted and biological children and felt a difference.

• Experienced ambivalent attachment with distant, withdrawn or stern parents.

• Had parents who were not loving or affectionate and did not discuss feelings.

• Experienced a Father Wound or Mother Wound on top of adoption.

• Experienced parental conflicts, divorce, death, addictions, abuse, violence, indifference, unpredictable behaviours, narcissism or other further adverse experiences.

• Were just different and felt like we didn’t belong.

• Any number of other additional difficulties that were heightened by being adopted and have a big impact beyond the original adoption wound.

Naturally – children who grew up with their biological families can experience some of the above, but my personal feeling is that being adopted makes these further, additional issues heavier, more impactful and more difficult.

My feeling is that if we want to heal so that we can grow into our best selves, we need to tease out the painful feelings so we can distinguish which bits are about being adopted and which bits are about something else. Once we’ve identified which difficult feelings come from which source, we can access the right repair tools and start our journey of positive growth. I share this because for many years I laid all the blame for my problems on being adopted until I explored ‘The Father Wound’ and understood more accurately why my relationships were so extra tricky.

And still, despite it all – my true self – as she has come to be revealed is generally rather happy, delighted by the simple things and content ….or maybe that’s just getting old!

Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash

You can meet Gilli at the How To Be Adopted online mini-retreat on Jan 20th 2024.

Return to Seoul - adoptee film screening at London's ICA + Q&A with Laure Badufle

I was recently blown away by Return to Seoul, which I saw with a good adoptee friend of mine. If you can get to see it, I highly recommend it.

Very excitingly, there’s a screening and a Q&A with Laure Badufle at the ICA in London on 8th July 2023 - French/Korean adoptee Laure inspired the character of Freddie. If you can make the date, I would urge you to go along as there will be lots of other adoptees there.

The Q&A with Laure will be hosted by Debbie Iromlou from the Adult Adoptee Movement, a UK-based group of inclusive adult adoptees. Formed by using lived experience to challenge attitudes on historic adoption and to change the narrative of adoption. Debbie is also a transracial adoptee who has written a guest blog for How To Be Adopted and runs a group in London called TAAN - transracial adult adoptee network. To find out more, you can email adoptionsupportduty@islington.gov.uk

But, back to this amazing film which really blew me away. So often we see chocolate-box endings to films about adoptees and adoption reunion - I’m thinking about the film Lion, for example. With Return to Seoul, I do feel there are many realistic moments that adoptees can relate to. Of course, I’m not a transracial adoptee so there are many additional layers there too. If you can’t make this special screening and Q&A, look out for the film when it comes to TV/streaming services.

More info about the film:

Official trailer for Return to Seoul

*** Opportunity for adoptees to watch the film for free from 7 July 2023 (credit card details needed but then you cancel your free trial after you have watched the film) ***

Davy Chou’s RETURN TO SEOUL, which premiered in Cannes 2022’s Un Certain Regard, is an unpredictable and refreshingly authentic story of a young woman’s search for identity. Park Ji-Min delivers a revelatory performance as Freddie, an adoptee who was born in South Korea and raised in France. Freddie is magnetic, spirited and hard to pin down; never in one place, or with one person, for long enough to get attached. At 25 years old, she visits Seoul for the first time since her adoption, in an attempt to reconnect with her biological parents and the culture she had to leave behind.

Held - a guest blog by adoptee Helen

I have always been curious about whether my earliest experience of being separated from my mother at birth and subsequently adopted might bear any relation to the insecurity and self-doubt I often experience in life and particularly in my work as a counsellor. In 2018 as part of an MSc Counselling and Psychotherapy I undertook a piece of research to try and explore this further. I used a methodology called “heuristic research” which essentially involves feeling into your own experience to get insight and implicit knowledge.  It was a very emotionally challenging and probably inadvisable process. This is an extract from some of my reflections at the time:

A cold morning in March and I’m trying to keep warm in bed. I don’t want to face the day. I’m thinking about an art exhibition I went to recently where I was drawn to an exhibit of some little white porcelain vases. There were several, beautiful fragile delicate ornate, like eggshell, easily fractured, broken. You were allowed to touch them. I held one in my hands and tiny bits of porcelain broke off like lace. “It’s okay…” the artist said “that’s meant to happen”. I loved these beautiful fragmenting vessels so light and delicate, at the same time containers, small, strong and rounded. This tiny vessel cupped in my hands, felt almost as if I was holding my self.

Thinking this soothes my miserable soul and a vaguely remembered poem drifts into my mind. It’s by my friend and poet Elizabeth Burns and it’s called “Held”. I haul myself out of bed to see if I can find her book and when I take it down from the shelf I see, ah yes I remember now, there’s a picture on the front cover of a beautiful round porcelain vase.  “Held” is the name of the title poem and it begins with a small child.

 “One year old and he’s discovering the river,

dropping stones in at the edge, retrieving them

He loves containers says his mother,

Then wonders, is a river a container?

The riverbed is: it curves its way….

down through these woods of wild garlic and bluebells,

letting the winding stony vessel of itself be filled

with springwater, meltwater, rainwater,  

[   ………   ]

and if the river’s a container, so’s a song,

holding words and tune; an eggshell

holds a bird, the atmosphere

enfolds the planet; everything is like a basket

says the basket maker, the earth contains us

we contain bones, blood air, our hearts

we are baskets and makers of baskets

and fresh from the hold of the womb

the boy child’s discovering how things

are held by other things: milk in a cup

food in a bowl, a ball in his hands

a stone in water, water in a nest of stones.”

Elizabeth Burns (2010)

The images in the poem are beautiful and simple. And they express a sense of what feels to be an emerging theme in my research. A theme around holding and containment. My research is essentially exploring what it means to be held and what happens to us when we are not held and the container of the mother is absent.

Could my being a fragile person who easily falls apart be a consequence of not being held? Not being held when I was born, at least not by my mother. By an incubator I guess (tiny, premature) or perhaps in the arms of strangers? Fresh from the hold of the womb, placed in the wrong container, or barely contained at all. Can something that happened so long ago still be felt all these years later?

Elizabeth’s poem is set in a valley called Roburndale, close to where I live, and where the river bends sharply as it meets a large rock face, it forms deep pools for swimming, the Fairie Pools. This is a place I know well and have taken myself to (dragged myself) in times of difficulty and despair knowing that immersing myself, swimming in these river waters brings life, invigorates. It does. It brings me into the world. It connects me and I become part of the world and I feel to come alive.

I am wondering then: is the river is holding me? The water, the riverbed? Or perhaps the earth, and the woods of wild garlic and bluebells. Some spiritual traditions consider the earth to be a mother, who holds and nourishes us. The poet Ted Hughes saw rivers as primal conduits to the core of our inner nature. Swimming in the river at Roburndale feels primal somehow. Perhaps I am experiencing a return to the waters of the womb and an emergence into life. Is that too fanciful? Would jumping into a cold bath have the same invigourating effect? Possibly yes. But at the same time there is no doubt that the river flowing through this lush hidden valley soothes me, almost as a mother to an infant. It calms me and I feel reconnected somehow. I feel as though my estranged psyche comes to dwell more fully in my body. I feel soothed and held.

I have always liked the work of the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Winnicott who developed a concept which he called “indwelling”. A capacity to dwell/exist/be present in your body. Winnicott carefully studied mothers and babies and came to the conclusion that “It is the provision of a safe holding environment that allows the infant to indwell”, traditionally the “safe holding environment” being the mother. Winnicott considers this capacity to indwell to be the bedrock of emotional health (Winnicott 1956).

This would suggest then that babies who don’t experience a safe holding environment would struggle to indwell. Perhaps in that case there can only be a sense of exile from the self, a feeling of not being at home, an existence that is outside of oneself. And a sense of forever trying to find a way back.

 Ref   Burns.E.(2010) Held. Edinburgh: Polygon

Photo by kazuend on Unsplash

Adoptee advocate burnout - Claire's story

I posted a blog last year about my experience of burnout and my need to take a step back. After this, the wonderful Gilli Bruce, from the team, contacted the Guardian to nominate me for a Guardian Angel award. I had no idea! When the Guardian called me to ask if they could interview me and send a photographer out, I was torn. On the one hand, I was absolutely exhausted and I knew I needed some time out. On the other hand, this was a great opportunity to get an adoptee’s viewpoint in a national newspaper. It would go some small way to redressing the awful imbalance where most stories about adoption in the media are from the adoptive parent’s point of view - the BBC being one of the main culprits. They even did a podcast episode on the language we use about care leavers and only interviewed an adoptive parent, no care leavers.

So, it was with some trepidation that I said yes to the Guardian article. In short, I put my physical and emotional health after the desire I have (and have always had since 2017) to help just one adoptee out there feel less alone. In that sense, the article was a big success. I was contacted by dozens of people saying thank you - even ex-classmates and colleagues I didn’t even know were adopted!

There followed an influx of new followers on social media and new subscribers to the email newsletters - hello to you all and welcome! But this meant even more beavering away behind the scenes from me! The extra exposure that this put me under also sadly led to some negativity and trolling from other adoptees. This was very hard to take as I didn’t have copy approval for the Guardian piece, which means I was potentially putting my relationship with my parents and siblings under threat as I had no idea what the Guardian would publish. It was a huge risk for me, on top of all the hard work I’ve put into HTBA over the last 5 years. It was very upsetting to get this backlash from other adoptees.

All of this led to an extreme situation in November of last year where by I was very stressed out and disregulated and starting to experience some physical symptoms - which I am now seeing a team of medical practitioners for. In fact, if anyone came to my talk at PAC UK for National Adoption Week you could probably tell I was struggling then. My talk was all about the nervous system and how, as adoptees, ours can need lots of additional care and tending. That is the lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way. You can have years of talking therapy but the body holds the score!

At this time, I made the heartbreaking decision to step back from the North London in-person adoptee groups that I set up completely from scratch and ran for 14 months. I am beyond grateful that two of the members stepped forward to run the logistics of the meetings, and Adopt North London agreed to continue their support. Sadly, I also decided to close my Patreon membership and stop running the monthly zooms for members. I am very grateful that two of the members stepped forward to run the Zooms and ensure they didn’t have to stop.

During this difficult time, Gilli Bruce and Lara Leon were an amazing support - thank you so much to you both, you’re angels!

As you can imagine, all this helped enormously to reduce my feelings of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough! Being enough! Changing enough! It helped me remember that there are lots of us and we can all do our bit, it doesn’t all fall to me. (Logically I know this!) The Adult Adoptee Movement have made my heart sing as it means the activism and influencing side of things is covered and I can focus on what I do best, blogging. I’m also great at sharing what’s going on in adopteeland, from new books to exhibitions, new groups and events. So please keep sharing these with me. I really miss Instagram for this because it was such a gorgeous community where we all shared and picked each other up. (Unlike Twitter!!)

You can comment with any adoptee news and events below, and/or email hello@howtobeadopted.com and I’ll share them in my email newsletters. Guest blogs are EVEN more welcome at this time as it helps take the pressure off me, so again please get in touch if you want to share a guest blog you’ve written.

Yummy things that have been helping while I’m recovering from burnout:

• Watching some relaxing TV like Emily In Paris - usually I would be busybusybusy and not allow myself ‘trash TV’!

• Reading beautiful books like The Marriage Portrait and Demon Copperhead

• Receiving some beautiful flowers and a fab book in the post from two of you lovely lot, thank you :)

• Cuddles with my hubby, my kids and my baby niece and nephew

• Boardgames with the family - we are currently loving Quirkle and Sushi Go!

Little by little I can feel myself starting to slow down, very gradually, and step out of flight/flight. Bear with me. I hope this helps someone somewhere take some time to tend to their nervous system too.

Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash

PS Bristol people! A new group has started led by a lovely lady called Becky. You can email me hello@howtobeadopted.com if you want to be put in touch with Becky.

PPS Another thing we’ve decided to do during this slightly fallow period is to make the videos from the virtual retreat free and available to all on YouTube: see the HTBA videos - huge thanks to the wonderful Gilli Bruce, Lara Leon and Anne Heffron for their enthusiastic agreement to share their talks :)

The dread of telling a therapist you're adopted in case they pull the plug

I’ve just found an EMDR therapist who sounds amazing. We had a brilliant initial chat over the phone, and we talked about felt safety, emotional regulation, fight/flight/freeze/fawn, triggers, early childhood experiences and much more. I am excited to hopefully work with her.

EMDR is one of the therapies I haven’t tried yet, after many years of talking therapy, some cranial sacral therapy and a fairly frustrating experience with CBT.  

However.

I haven’t mentioned that I’m adopted.

And I’m betting that the therapist isn’t Ofsted registered.

Which means I can’t mention that I’m adopted, or she will have to cease treating me immediately. If she doesn’t cease, she will be breaking current law in England and Wales. However, if I don’t tell her I’m adopted, am I breaking the law??

This could be interesting. How many sessions can I get through without mentioning I’m adopted! There are certainly early experiences I would love to tackle that can be talked about without the pre-knowledge, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be nearly as useful as if the therapist had all that detail.

What a frustrating dilemma I find myself in. And I know hundreds of you have had similar experiences.

This is why we need to challenge the Ofsted law. It’s clearly a mistake that nobody considered properly when the responsibility of adoption moved from the Department of Health to the Department of Education.

If you haven’t yet filled in the government consultation, please do so. It takes around 15 minutes, maybe a bit longer if you have any additional educational needs – as there is a bit of reading to do to understand the way the questions are worded.

 Respond to the consultation now: deadline 20 March

And importantly, please forward the consultation to any current or past therapists and counsellors. I’m sending it on to the counsellors who have turned me down in the past and said they wish they didn’t have to. Well, now is your chance to change the law and get your wish! We need as many practitioners as possible to fill it in.

And, for the record, I think therapists should still have specialist training in adoption (from an adoptee perspective, not an adoptive parent perspective as seems to be much more common), but I do not think Ofsted need to gatekeep this. We are adults and we are very capable of enquiring if a therapist has taken any specialist training. Whether the current Barnardo’s training that Osted require is adequate is another story. Let’s get this law changed first and then we can look to improve training for therapists if required.

More info on the proposed changes can be found here

Photo by Isabela Drasovean on Unsplash 

Introducing Adult Adoptee Movement

Thanks to Claire and How To Be Adopted for inviting us to introduce ourselves here. We are baby scoop era adoptees living in the UK, who came together in May 2022 during the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) parliamentary inquiry into historic forced adoptions. We aim to raise adoptee voices and campaign on issues that affect adult adoptees, in order to change the narrative and to improve things not only for us but for younger adoptees too. We believe that at our stage in life we have a perspective on adoption that we did not have when we were younger and that our lived experience and insights can inform policy makers and service providers. Adult adoptees are rarely part of the conversation and we want to change that.

Our first task was to write a response to the JCHR report, which we published in October 2022. We are still (as of February 2023) waiting for the government’s response to the Committee report, which was due in September 2022. We have had an email reply from the Department for Education but it echoes the evidence given to the Committee by then-Secretary of State Nadhim Zahawi, and it does not sound like the government will take responsibility for the state’s role in forced adoptions and issue an apology. We are asking for a lot more than an apology and you can read our full response on our website.

One of our recommendations was to remove the requirement for those providing counselling and therapy to adult adoptees to be registered with Ofsted. The government is now consulting on this change in England and you can respond to the consultation up to 20 March 2023. We will be responding as a group and we will make our response public. We support the proposal but have concerns about what unregulated services will look like, and about how we will actually get the help we need.

If you would like to learn more you can visit our website where you will find profiles of our founding members, links to our response to the report, some resources and a series of blogs we have written. You can also follow us on Twitter or sign up to our newsletter. If you are an adoptee and would like to join our Facebook support group you can find it here.

We love the work that HTBA does and will continue to advocate for adoptee-led services and organisations to be at the centre of any support for adoptees.

Adult Adoptee Movement, 
February 2023

How To Be Adopted Lake District retreat June 9-11th 2023

June 9-11th 2023, the much-anticipated and requested How To Be Adopted retreat!

We’re going to be at the wonderful Nab Cottage in the Lake District. Nab Cottage is situated in Rydal on the A591 between Ambleside and Grasmere villages half-way along Rydal Lake. The postcode is LA229SD, and the nearest train station is Windermere. And yes there is a hot tub ;)

Email Lara to book your place!

The retreat will be run by:

Lara Leon, adult adoptee, Existential Psychotherapist and researcher into adoption and the needs of adoptees.

Gilli Bruce, adult adoptee, Integrative Psychotherapist and researcher into the lifelong impacts of adoption.

We’re looking forward to hosting this event and hope you will enjoy a restorative break in the company of others who ‘get you’!

The theme of the retreat is – How to be adopted?

Our weekend will include some relaxing activities and input from us on the topic of “How to be adopted”? in various sections that will be informative, therapeutic and generate insights…and possibly some emotions. With this in mind, there will be space for private reflective work, reading or any writing that resonates with you, plus sharing in small groups too.

 Our intention is to offer some warm connecting and laughter too so that we can come away feeling a bit lighter, with some new ideas on how to be happier and more peaceful adoptees. Also, we recommend that participants take advantage of the glorious surrounding area for a nature fix, or at least a visit to the famous Grasmere Gingerbread Shop!

The gathering will be a safe space for everyone with a safety agreement in place so that everyone can feel confident and comfortable to share / not share, protect their own mental health and get the most from their weekend.

Please note: It will be beyond the scope of the weekend to address any further trauma outside of the topic of adoption.

Parking

There’s parking in front of the cottage – if any of you know each other and can car share that would be fantastic.

Feeling safe and secure

The gathering will be a safe space for everyone with a safety agreement in place so that everyone can feel confident and comfortable to share / not share, protect their own mental health and get the most from their weekend.

Yummy food

Nab serves lunch, usually around 1 and dinner around 7, though can adjust these to suit. The food is freshly prepared, generally vegetarian, and as far as possible, uses organic, locally sourced and fairtrade products. Please let our host know beforehand if you have any special dietary requirements. Nab can cater for coeliacs and vegans at no extra charge. There is a surcharge of £10pp for any other requirements. Our host needs at least one week notice for special diets.

Pet allergies - Nab has some furry residents – 2 dogs and a cat so please be aware of this and factor this in of you have any pet allergies.

Sauna: There is a woodburning sauna outside the studio. If 3 or more people would like to use the sauna please let our host Tim know. It takes about an hour to heat up and costs £50.

Hot Tub: Our host Tim offers a complementary 2 hour session per group for use of the tub. After this there is a charge of £10 per hour.Please read instructions before using the sauna or the hot tub.

Payments: secure your place with a £50.00 deposit. The cost is £339.00 for two nights’ accommodation in a shared twin room with a fellow participant, all sessions and activities and all meals.

Our lovely host Tim needs payment 10 weeks prior to the event so we do need to ensure monies are in so we can pay him.

The event is non-profit making.

Lara is handling payments and to avoid Eventbrite charges we are using her bank account. To contact Lara regarding payments please do so via hello@lara-leon.com.

We will send out the group safety agreement and the information document from Nab Cottage a week prior to the event.

A life-changing day for adoptees to gather in community

Anne Heffron with HTBA founder Claire

In October 2022, How To Be Adopted hosted a virtual retreat for National Adoption Week 2022 in the UK. The event was attended by 40 adopted people and - thanks to sponsorship from PAC-UK we were able to provide a large percentage of subsidised/free places to adoptees experiencing financial challenges.

You can now donate to get access to the recordings from the day. £5 for one session; £10 for all three sessions.

The agenda included:

• Yoga for adoptees with HTBA founder Claire who has recently qualified as a Kundalini Global yoga teacher.

• Adoptee guilt with adoptee and therapist Lara Leon

• Our narratives with adoptee and counsellor Gilli Bruce

• Breakout rooms with other adoptees, facilitated by HTBA team members

• Keynote speech from adoptee and author Anne Heffron

The feedback from adopted people was overwhelmingly positive:

“Very good presentations, well thought out. Provided a safe and caring environment.”

“Wonderful community, excellent talks, perfect mix!”

“Very high quality presentations and well taught yoga tailored towards adoptees and helpful info on yoga for emotional/nervous system regulation. Lara's presentation articulated deep thoughts and feelings I had inside but had not been able to articulate fully before - very illuminating. And I have read and consumed a lot of adoptee material over the last decade - all the key texts and probably every episode of adopteesOn podcast for a start! But she still gave me some new things to think about. I felt deeply understood. Gillian's pres. was very inspiring and I felt quite excited by the possibilities she opened up around stories and trauma. Anne's talk was also fascinating, she went very deep too, it was so refreshing and I love how she didn't hold back and talked about some unusual subjects that actually are right where I am at as well - made me feel validated too.”

“It was a very good balance and mix of speakers and activities (and well-paced).”

“Good to be with others with similar life experiences and hear from interesting speakers.”

“I found it a supportive event really well organised and each session was wonderful. It’s hard to choose a favourite.”

“It was life changing to be with people who totally understand how I as an adoptee see the world and how my head works!”

“It was a fabulous day, such a sense of community.”

“Such rich presentations but it was such a relaxed vibe that although some of the subject matter hit home I never felt unsafe.  You all held the group extremely well.”

“Felt I was on the same page as everyone else.”

“Hearing from others who have the same feelings and struggles as I do was incredibly validating.  I didn't realize how much it would help!”

“It was a very interesting day and helped me to feel validated and seen.”

“Love your aim improve access to support groups nationally.”

“Gaining understanding, recognition and validation of so many emotional issues that I have struggled with for life and that I have been dealing with and working through in recent years. Also the effects and affects of all these issues in all areas of my life. Also being in the company of other adult adoptee's was so very very reassuring and a rare feeling of true connection was wonderful.”

“I felt the day was very informative, validating, personal and well considered. I appreciate all of your hard work to make the day possible. Beginning the day with Claire and yoga was a terrific way to approach an emotionally and mentally charged day. I also appreciate that each person who spoke is an adoptee who shared their personal experience as well as their research.”

“It was the first time I had ever been amongst other adopted people.  I found it very affirming.  There was some excellent information and sessions.  And others, who seemed further ahead on their journeys, were very encouraging.”

“It was good to hear about some aspects I had not heard about before. - e.g re-writing a narrative to something more helpful, Gillian’s session.”

“Very good day. Good to have a day for adopted adults.”

“I look forward to meeting people in real life!”

• Find out more about our 2023 in-person Lake District retreat

• See all upcoming adoptee events on Eventbrite

• Find an adoptee support group near you

The tech support on the day was provided by the excellent Sara Smith of StormVixen.

Lara Leon talking about adoptee guilt

Adoptee-only virtual retreat for National Adoption Week 2022: what to expect

We can’t wait to see you at our adoptees-only event on 15th October! Claire had the idea for this event when she recalled how dysregulated adopted people can get during National Adoption Week. This yummy event should ground us and set us up nicely before the week, which can be problematic for some.

Originally Claire had the idea of doing the event in person in London, but logistically it wasn’t possible for 2022. The event is kindly sponsored by PAC-UK who have also provided some subsidised places. These have not yet been snapped up, so please email hello@howtobeadopted.com to get your code to book, no questions about your finances will be asked.

Book now

So let’s see what’s in store for you lucky adoptees:

Gentle grounding yoga session with Claire

Claire qualified in Kundalini Global Yoga this year and is excited to bring the benefits to adoptees - it’s a new form of Kundalini which is more accessible and inclusive and it’s been shown to help the nervous system.

Adoptee guilt with Lara Leon, adoptee and therapist

Many adoptees suffer in silence, not understanding why they feel so confused, sad,  or lonely. Until recently, the plight of adoptees wasn’t well understood, and so open communication about these feelings wasn’t (still isn’t) something that is openly encouraged in families and peer groups.

As if this weren’t enough to contend with, the inability to bond or form strong loving attachments to adoptive family members may result in further feelings that the adoptee may have to cope with alone. Many adoptees experience a sense of guilt as they try to navigate and understand their feelings (or lack thereof) towards their caregivers and siblings. They often end up overcompensating, acting out or distancing themselves, causing further hurt to all involved.

This talk will highlight some of the key points about adoptee guilt, and how to go about tackling it.

‘Life Story’ with Gilli Bruce, adoptee and counsellor

We know from the world of psychology, that everyone forms a sub-conscious story by the time they reach the age of 7. This ‘story’ is about ourselves - and may include aspects of our worth, how we must behave and where we belong in the scheme of things. Most of us are unaware that we have this story hidden within our sub-conscious, but it’s there – operating behind the scenes and having a significant impact on our lives.

Naturally, adoptees have a story too and being adopted can lead to particular kinds of story that our young selves concocted to make sense of this confusing childhood experience. We will explore the concept of Life Story, the impacts it has on our lives and how we might want to change our story into an adult’s version that will serve us better.

You might want to have pen and paper to hand for this section of the day.

Breakout sessions: connect with other adopted people

After lunch, it’s your time to gather in breakout rooms (supported by the HTBA team) to share thoughts on the day so far and connect with other adopted people. We know so many of you contact us asking to be put in touch with other adoptees so here’s your chance. This is the only section of the day that will NOT be recorded.

Anne Heffron joins us from the States

The author of You Don’t Look Adopted is joining us for a. motivational speech on the power of writing your story even if no one else reads it. If you’ve never heard Anne speak before, get ready for a treat!

Postcard to myself

Lovely exercise to end the day.

The day runs 10am-3.30pm GMT with plenty of breaks

All sessions will be recorded with the exception of the breakout rooms

Cost: £29 Book now

Member price: £19 (find out about becoming a member)

Subsidised places are available, please get in touch on hello@howtobeadopted.com if you’re financially challenged - no questions asked.

Any questions about the day, email hello@howtobeadopted.com

‘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

7 tips for adoptees who are new to this blog

Hello! You may have seen us in The Guardian and are curious as to what it’s all about. Adopted people needing support? What for!? Well, a warm welcome! You’re about to find out what the challenges are and how we’ve been campaigning for change in support for adopted people.

Here at How To Be Adopted, we have been pondering what it means to be adopted for a number of years. (Feels like longer, says my husband!) So, if you’ll permit us we wanted to share what we’ve learned in 7 tips, covering the journey we’ve been on:

1. Read, watch and listen to all the adoptee content

   Many people start with this stage, almost like a hyper-fixation, you consume as much as you can find - from books, to podcasts and blogs. A popular pitstop at this stage is all six series of the podcast AdopteesOn - caution, may leave you crying on the kitchen floor with relief and recognition. Anne Heffron’s You Don’t Look Adopted is a popular book choice, and her Instagram is full of truth bombs.

   This Paul Sunderland video on addiction and adoption is important, but very hard hitting. Make sure you have someone to hold your hand while you watch.

2. Find someone you trust to talk to

   It’s quite common to withdraw a little at this stage as you’re processing everything you’re reading and learning. You may find that people you thought were a safe sounding board are bringing their own opinions to the table when you really need someone to listen. If you have an understanding friend or partner, bravo. Otherwise you may want to find a therapist. This is where we break the bad news that adoption-competent therapists are thin on the ground in the UK as they have to be registered with Ofsted to treat adopted people. PAC-UK are a good option at this stage, ask if your local authority funds any therapeutic sessions with them. If not, the phoneline is a godsend.

3. Connect with other adoptees

   How To Be Adopted is a good place to start. We hold regular adoptee events in person and online including the North London adoptee group. The next one is 15th October 2022 10am-3pm, a virtual retreat to boost our wellbeing before National Adoption Week. Find out more and book

   We’ve put together a list of the adoptee peer groups we know about in the UK. In the US there’s AdopteesConnect.

   Another UK organisation who run events is Adoptee Futures.

4. Stay boundaried on social media

   Following on from the above, you may head to social media to connect with other adopted people. It’s worth knowing that Twitter can be a really tough place to be, so take it very easy! Instagram is slightly kinder, in my experience.

5. Get support for search and reunion

   Sadly, reunion is rarely like Long Lost Family. If it’s something you’re thinking about, PAC-UK is a good start as are Barnardo’s and Family Connect. These are for England and Wales. The important thing to remember is, if reunion doesn’t work out, it’s not your fault - these are relationships for which we have no blueprint and many birth parents carry a lot of shame (this is not our shame to carry, by the way!)

6. Look after your wellbeing and stay in the body

   You may want to consider other therapies on top of / instead of talking therapy. We cannot recommend anything in particular, but some adopted people have found cranial sacral therapy, reiki, EMDR, massage, somatic therapy and music therapy helpful.

   Coming out of the fog, as it’s referred to, is a very emotional, draining time for many. So prioritise your wellbeing as much as you can. At this stage you might start learning about the nervous system and realise that you have been living in flight/fight/freeze/fawn. Be compassionate with yourself. Try to stay grounded (exercise from Gilli below), and consider anything that takes you into the body, such as yoga, swimming, walking, gardening. The Body Keeps The Score is an important read.

7. Check the credentials of support organisations

   There are a number of organisations who purport to offer support for adopted people. It’s important to look into this, as the big ones are actually set up by and run for adoptive parents. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use them, but be aware.

To stay in the loop about our events and campaigns, sign up to the How To Be Adopted mailing list

Gilli’s grounding exercise

Some signs that you may be ‘ungrounded’ include:

• You get distracted easily

• Feeling spaced out

• An inability to concentrate with focused attention

• You over-think or ruminate

• You engage in personal dramas

• You experience anxiety and perpetual worrying

• A sense of urgency, a need to be fast-paced as if everything needs to happen right now

Physical clues may include:

• Poor sleep patterns and on-going fatigue

• Inflammation

• Poor circulation

• Palpitations or feeling as though your heart is racing

• Knotted stomach or tension in the body

• You feel fidgety and it is hard to sit still and relax properly

Research on grounding has been accumulating over the last 15 years and there is growing evidence that grounding techniques will:

• Elevate mood

• Reduce emotional stress

• Improve immune responses and reduce inflammation

• Improve blood flow

• Improve sleep, rest and relaxation

Grounding techniques

Cover your crown – place one or both hands over your crown, close your eyes,

breathe deeply and mentally push yourself down gently for 30 -60 seconds.

Feel your feet – stand or sit and put all your attention into your feet. Feel any

sensations of socks, shoes, floor surface, temperature etc. 30-60 seconds.

Stand like a tree – stand with your feet parallel and at least shoulder’s width apart.

Keep your head floating above your body, chin tucked in and spine straight. Rest

your hands at your side or on your navel. Without collapsing your posture – sink all

your weight and tension into your feet, allowing it to sink deeper and out into the

ground below. Imagine roots growing from your feet and out into the ground.

Extend these roots out to the sides like the roots of an old oak tree. Extend them

deeper into the ground. Strengthen a sense of being so firmly rooted into the

ground that nothing could blow you over – you are firmly anchored into the ground

and are part of it. Hold this for 60-90 seconds.

Follow your breath – focus on the sensation of the breath and track it as it enters

the nose, down into the lungs and back out again. Don’t force the breath to change

just notice it. In particular pay attention to the space between the outbreath and the

next in-breath – this is the moment when the body enjoys total stillness and where

you will find it.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Dancing on eggshells - guest post from adoptee David

Maybe it is the people pleaser in me, but as an adoptee I find reunion like dancing on eggs shells.  There are so many people's feelings to juggle and for some reason we put ourselves last in that list. We talk about the adoption triad, the child, adoptive parents, and the birth parents, but there more people involved when it comes to reunion.  This can range from siblings, both bio and adoptive, our spouses to wider family in general.  Everyone has feelings on the situation, even if they don’t vocalize them.  We’re afraid to upset any of them in case we are discarded and end up as alone as we were when we were given away.

I was born in 1983 and was adopted shortly after birth.  I had a happy childhood and spent my entire youth in the fog.  I didn’t want to look for either birth parent. I thought I wouldn’t be prepared for what was on the other side if I opened the door. That all changed in 2006 when my parents received a letter from the county council adoption services which said my birth mother wanted to know how I was doing.  This could have been addressed to me, but the adoption agency chose to send it to my parents in case I had not been told I was adopted.

The music starts, and my first partners take to the dance floor.

I seem to remember my parents handing me the letter and watching me while I read it. It was a lot to take in so I can’t be sure this memory is correct.

I was in a daze for several days after, the actual woman who gave birth to me wanted to know about me.  I didn’t think this would ever happen, what do I do and how do I handle such a massive situation.  I know, I’ll talk to my parents about it.  I remember trying to talk to my parents about what to do, they were and still are the people I go to for life advice, but on this occasion, I found out the situation was different.  My dad said, “surely you must know what to do”, his tone was frustrated and almost angry, like it was choosing between them and my bio mum.  I countered with the argument that both my parents and bio mum made their choices regarding adoption and gave it thought.  I never made any choices but am supposed to know what to do.  I heard the eggshell crunch as I stepped on the dance floor.  The passage of time has shown my parents that there is no threat to them, I love them all the same.  This allows me to be heavier footed as I throw my metaphorical shapes.

My next partner, and the most delicate to dance with, is my bio mum.

Meeting my bio mum was a whirlwind, at the time we were in different social classes.  She had done well for herself, she was 38, and her and her husband part owned a company and two restaurants.  I was young, 23, and came from inner city terraced housing, with working class parents.  She was ready for dancing the Waltz, and I was warming up for Gangnam style.

 I tried to navigate the relationship seeing if I could fit in and be up to what I thought her expectations were.   I sometimes found myself in uncomfortable situations and didn’t speak up as I thought it might jeopardize our fledgling relationship.  For example, the day we met she invited her husband and children to meet me, only telling me when they were on their way.  I wasn’t ready for this; in hindsight I should have spoken up.

I opened my life to my bio mum, which meant juggling my parents' feelings and still building a relationship with my bio mum.

The only thing I ever asked of my bio mum was information of my bio dad.  This wouldn’t so much trigger an eggshell crunching, but more an explosion like dynamite.  Over an 8-year period I only ever asked about my bio dad 3-4 times. The first couple of times she shut down as soon as I said “Can you tell me about my bio dad”. 
The next couple of times I got the smallest of snippets.  A name, his sisters first name and was told she would not have any idea where they were now.  This was hard to deal with, yet I did the dance and swallowed the pain of opening my life but not getting the information I wanted in return.

Eventually I got to the point where I said to my bio mum, on a phone call, either tell me more about my bio dad or we won’t talk any more.  She said “ok” and put down the phone.  I didn’t speak to her for a couple of years after that.  It cut very deep, being dropped like a stone for asking one question in a pleasant and civil manner.

My wife told me years later how much this event affected me. I thought I was fine.  But my wife said my self-esteem plummeted at this point and I had a lot of inner anger.

The next set of dance partners is a complicated mix…

My wife and I eventually found my bio dad and his family.  He had a very distinct surname and we tracked down my grandparents using old telephone directories, electoral roles and Zoopla (to see if the house they lived in had ever been sold).

I dealt with this reunion differently, I chose a slow dance rather than jumping into something too fast, but it was complicated and delicate all the same.
My bio dad was hard to locate, so I approached my grandparents via a letter.  They responded and were very open and supportive. My bio dad is an ex-heroin addict and has demons of his own.  My nan had him when she was fifteen. My bio dad found out at age twelve that his dad, who he grew up with, was not actually his biological father.  This does play into the reunion dance as I must be careful what I say on this subject as he and my nan have different views on being told at a later age about his true father.

My grandparents asked if I really wanted to meet my bio dad after they told me he had been an addict and had been to prison.  I said I did and have managed this relationship ever since.  I get on well with my grandparents, but find the relationship with my bio dad difficult, he is unreliable, and I have to make all the effort.  I don’t gel with him on a personal level, but I do not want to sever that relationship as that is what my bio mum did to me.  I love spending time with my grandparents, aunty and cousins.  I don’t want to leave my bio dad out, but I don’t want to spend time with him either.  This is a difficult dance to choreograph.

A second reunion and more dancing

When my son was born, I reconnected with my bio mum.  I didn’t want him to miss out knowing he had an aunty and uncles because my bio mum would never have reconnected.  I had to do all the repair work, even though I felt it was not my job to do.  It is hard to be the better person in this situation as all the pain was inflicted on me, my bio mum told me she would never have reached out to me.

After this reunion my wife was talking to my bio dad's sister, my aunty.  She said did my wife know that her son, my cousin, is friends with my bother on my bio mum's side.  They had been friends since infant school and had grown up together and spent a lot of time at each other's houses.  My bio mum knew where my bio father and his family were all along.  When my wife told me on the car journey home, I felt so angry.  The pain caused by never being given information about my bio dad and the lie of telling me she had no idea where they were felt awful.  But, as a good little people pleaser, I suck this up to prevent an eggshell being broken and tolerate the excuse my bio mum tells that she didn’t want to ruin the friendship my brother and cousin have. 

My wife found it hard when I reconnected with my bio mum.  My wife is a loving and protective person, she couldn’t understand why I contacted my bio mum when all she caused me is pain.  This is a subtle little dance all on its own, my wife has an opinion on this subject even though she doesn’t always voice it.

I honestly don’t know why put myself back in this situation with my bio mum, my logical mind says I shouldn’t have done it, I am worth more.  But my heart says you need to prove yourself worthy of your bio mum, you are good enough to fight for and keep like her other children.

I am still wary of this dance, like the eggs will suddenly all crunch and the music could turn off at any moment, purely because of something I might say.

I must be very careful when meeting either side of my biological family, they live nearby each other; my cousins and siblings went to the same schools.   My bio mum doesn’t want to interact with my bio dad’s family, even though they never knew I existed my entire life.  My bio dad's family are welcoming and kind, but the pain my bio mum went through in giving me up (forced by her mother, who is now deceased) means she could never face discussing that with them.  I am guessing at this last point; I think it is too sensitive a subject to ask about.

Extra dance partners…

With all the dance partners I’ve described, along with so many others I haven’t mentioned, like siblings or friends, it can feel like a disorganized line dance with 10 or more people.  You’re dancing with everyone at once, to their own music, and you are trying to be so delicate on the dance floor when really you just want to stomp around and enjoy yourself.

My reunion story is lucky and simple compared to others. I have found and have a relationship with both sides of my biological family.  I have been welcomed.  But even in this ideal situation, there are so many people involved all with their own feelings.

As adoptees we can never truly be ourselves, we are always beholden to the decisions and feelings of others.   Some people, such as our biological parents, have a power over us we cannot control.  We go back to them even if it causes us immense pain.  We accept their lies to preserve relationships.  We do the dance.

My advice here will be hypocritical as I don’t follow it myself, I am too afraid.  I think we should be ourselves, talk openly even if others are uncomfortable with it.  Not many people think about their words before they talk to adoptees, so why shouldn’t we be as free.  We never asked to be born or given up, we don’t owe anything to anybody but ourselves.  Be aware that the eggshells will break, and relationships can end.  Hold your head high and ask yourself, if someone isn’t supporting you then do you really need them.  Being a people pleaser and keeping quiet only hurts ourselves.  We always absorb the pain that others have caused.

Be free, choose the music you like, and dance as hard as you can.  We only get one life, no matter how we got here we should enjoy the party the same as everyone else.

 Photo credits:

Egg photo by Fernando Andrade on Unsplash

"File:Psy performing Gangnam Style at the Future Music Festival 2013.jpg" by Eva Rinaldi is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Group of people dancing: Photo by Ardian Lumi on Unsplash

An update on the Ofsted regulations that obstruct counselling for adoptees in the UK

An update on the push for changes to the regulations that obstruct counselling support for those affected by adoption.

For those of you who may not be aware – there have been obstructive restrictions in place for many years in the UK, that dictate who and who can not offer counselling support to those adults affected by adoption.

 As it currently stands, young adoptees up to age 21 (25 in special circumstances) can access counselling with specific counsellors - who have completed specific costly training with a few specific providers (that’s a lot of specifics right there) and who are registered with Ofsted (as this work comes under the Department of Education). This counselling is available to support families with adoptees and I wholeheartedly agree that this group should be protected by regulations and that indeed adoption-specific training is necessary and beneficial. So far so good. The problem here, is that adult adoptees and birth mothers who had to have their babies adopted – also come under this regulation.

Why is this a problem? Well – due to the costs, limited availability and the whole procedural machine that is entailed with Ofsted regulations – hardly any independent counsellors undertake this costly training - or have the will to create the processes and procedures required to meet Ofsted standards (hats off and thanks to the few committed souls who have by the way).

So – Ofsted registered counsellors are a rare breed and availability is very patchy around the UK. I researched provision in the North and searched all counties between Birmingham and the borders of Scotland and only found 7 Ofsted registered counsellors listed – that’s for half the country! I’m sure there is more provision in London and the South but this paucity of provision across the UK makes finding support incredibly difficult (happily on-line working eases this situation somewhat).  

We have been doing what we can to get these restrictive regulations changed so that more adoptees and birth mothers can access the counselling support they need. We have badgered Ofsted (thanks go to Matthew Brazier who has been super-helpful and supportive) and generally made noise about this and have created our own support streams via blog posts, webinars and adult adoptee peer- support groups. So far so stuck. However – the GOOD NEWS is in!!

On May 25th 2022, there was a meeting in Parliament took place between The Joint Committee on Human Rights and representatives of the government – namely Mr. Nadhim Zahawi The Secretary of State for Education and Sarah Jennings the Deputy Director of Adoption, Family Justice and Care leavers, also from the department of Education.

The chair was Harriet Harman. The case put forward by the committee was entitled ‘A Right to a Family Life’ and covered the experience of unmarried women who had to give up babies for adoption between 1949-1976. (Bear with me here, adoptees are included too).

I have copied the exchange that occurred towards the end of the meeting that is relevant to adult adoptees below, If you would like to watch the whole meeting (it was actually more interesting than I expected) you can find it on line at Parliament TV Live – Wednesday 25th May 3.15- 4.08 pm, The Human Rights Joint Committee, ‘A Right to a Family Life: the adoption of children of Unmarried women 1949-1976’.

This is the exchange that relates to adult adoptees:

Sarah Jennings: Thank you, Baroness, for the question. The Secretary of State was just beginning to touch on the issue that we know has been raised through evidence to this inquiry about the barriers to accessing support because of the requirement that professionals providing therapy and support that relates to adoption services must be registered with Ofsted. We are aware that this has been raised as one of the reasons why people are struggling to access support. I think the Secretary of State was just going on to say that this is an issue that we are very keen to look at.

 Nadhim Zahawi: Currently, the requirement that services are Ofsted registered can be a barrier to adult adoptees accessing and receiving support. I want to try to get rid of any bureaucratic barriers where this will, I hope, improve service delivery. However, we need to be careful that we do not sacrifice quality, which cannot be compromised in any way. I will give you my commitment and pledge that my officials will look at the options as to how we do this. We will consult very shortly on removing the requirement for providers of support services for adult adoptees having to register with Ofsted. In practice, that should make it much easier, and also more cost effective, for these providers to run their businesses. It will mean that support is more accessible for the adults who need it.

Baroness Ludford: I am a Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords. You have pre-empted my question. Like others, I appreciate the empathy that you have shown, referring to injustices and pain, and to the huge and unending suffering from these traumatic experiences. You have emphasised the importance of the ability to access therapeutic counselling and say that you want to try to get rid of the bureaucratic hurdles of the Ofsted registration process without compromising quality, and that you are going to consult. First, can you give us an idea of timescale of that consultation? Was it already in the pipeline before this 11 Oral evidence: The right to family life: adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976 inquiry prompted you to think about that? Secondly, does removing altogether the need to register with Ofsted contain some dangers of quality dilution?

 Nadhim Zahawi: Baroness Ludford, thank you for the question. Because it is a regulatory matter, we need to consult on it. However, we have been following your deliberations and evidence here as well. When I looked at this with my officials, we thought that we should move on it quite quickly because it is something that we should be able to do reasonably well and rapidly, and in a way that does not compromise quality. I think we can do that, and it will, I hope, inject more capacity in the system.

Sarah Jennings: We are already in active discussions with Ofsted colleagues about it. I think your point about the balance of risk and how to avoid compromising quality, as the Secretary of State alluded to, is why we are very keen to make sure that we consult and that we balance those risks and seek views from the sector as well.

Baroness Ludford: Will that be soon?

Sarah Jennings: I hope so.

Chair: There have clearly been decades of unmet need in this respect and obviously you are addressing it now, as you have told us. Do you have a budget for this? Are you confident you will be able to resource this?

Nadhim Zahawi: I think so. My department will be spending £86 billion a year by 2024. It is a big department and I think we can do this and do it well.

 Chair: Perhaps when you write to us you can give us a sense of whether there will be any ring-fenced budget of any sort and what sort of scale it might be on. For these services to be high quality and accessible to those who need them, there obviously need to be funding streams behind them.

Nadhim Zahawi: I do not want to repeat myself and repeat the numbers, but I can send you the numbers on the increased investment in the NHS that I outlined earlier.

(Joint Committee on Human Rights Oral evidence: The right to family life: the adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976, HC 270 Wednesday 25 May 2022 Watch the meeting Members present: Ms Harriet Harman MP (Chair); Joanna Cherry MP; Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen; Lord Dubs; Florence Eshalomi MP; Lord Henley; Baroness Ludford; Baroness Massey of Darwen; Dean Russell; David Simmonds MP; Lord Singh of Wimbledon. Questions 25 - 34 Witnesses I: Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State, Department for Education; Sarah Jennings, Deputy Director of Adoption, Family Justice and Care Leavers, Department for Education)

So – watch this space! Fingers crossed we will be reporting changes that affect adult adoptees sooner rather than later, although I do fully recognise that there is still a need for training so that counsellors fully understand the trauma and difficulties associated with adoption. Change must come, but it must be achieved with checks and safeguards in place to ensure that when we do get counselling – it is of the highest quality and meets the needs of adoptees and birth mothers who have suffered for too long.  (Side note from Claire: this training should not be written by an adoptive parent, as we believe the current training provided by Barnardo’s is!)

 - update from Gilli Bruce

Read the full minutes from the Parliament meeting

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

What is EMDR and why can it be helpful for adopted people? guest blog from David Benjamin

David Benjamin was adopted at six weeks old in the North East of England in 1972. His journey to finding his birth family is complete, this has given him the passion and experience to help others in his work. He is a qualified therapist and has sat on adoption and foster panels for the local authority for the past 10 years. He regularly tells his story to prospective adopters.

So what is EMDR and how can it help adoptees?

In the 1980s, American psychologist Francine Shapiro became interested in the connection between eye movement and the affect of persistent traumatic memories. She assumed that eye movements had a desensitizing effect on traumatic memories, and when she experimented with this she found that others also had the same response. She began a lifelong study developing what is now commonly known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. EMDR therapy is designed to resolve unprocessed traumatic memories in the brain.

According to Laurel Parnell, (who developed ‘Attachment focused EMDR’), “A trauma is an experience that causes one to develop erroneous beliefs about oneself or the world and to behave in ways that are not skillful”. For example, a child who is abused may come to believe that the world isn’t safe. They may have difficulty thriving in intimate relationships.

Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk explains in his book ‘The Body Keeps The Score’, “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on the mind, brain, and body.”

Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. This process involves communication between the amygdala (the switch triggered by stressful events), the hippocampus (which assists with learning, including memories about safety vs danger), and the prefrontal cortex (which regulates our behaviour and emotion). While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, or with a talking therapy, sometimes the ‘stickiness’ may need to be processed with a therapy such as EMDR - which moves the trauma information from being dysfunctional to functional; it allows the cognitive and emotional parts of the brain to be online at the same time which speeds up processing. Often talking therapies may not work as they can take the person too deeply back into the trauma thus creating even more distress.

Stress responses are part of our natural instincts. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or a perception of not being safe in the present. EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories, and allows normal healing to resume. If the therapy is successful, the experience can still be remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved. Many people I’ve worked with describe it like they are trying to remember the feelings around the incident but it feels distant, like it’s behind them and they can no longer grasp it, and the triggers that once controlled their day-to-day lives have disappeared.

The trauma that adoptees have experienced is beyond huge. The adoption of a child is a single event, fixed in time, with a beginning and an end. However, the impact  is far-reaching—a process that continues throughout the life of the adoptee. Removed, often as a very small child, from their mother, the safety-inducing sounds and smells which the infant responds to in that supernatural attachment between a mother and child is brutally broken. That baby or child must feel terror beyond words, given away to strangers, experiencing unfamiliar sounds and smells, the child will perceive this to be a dangerous situation. Even as adults we struggle with too much change, but this early relinquishment catapults things far into the severe trauma realm in an infant brain that is years from full development and resilience. For many adoptees, the trauma happened before we developed the language to explain the events, so our memories are primarily somatic, stored in our nervous system.

These experiences become fixed in the body and mind in the form of ‘irrational’ emotions and physical symptoms, taken forward into adulthood. Children can’t process these feelings on their own in the absence of therapeutic interventions, and post-adoption services are lacking, at best, outside of the private therapy sector. 

The affect of trauma is sticky, like the static when a balloon is rubbed on your clothes and it attaches to you. When the static is discharged the balloon falls to the floor, it is just a balloon…when the affect of trauma is gone, it is just a memory that can be thought about without the woosh of emotion or panic, the triggers disappear and a new freedom can be lived. That’s what EMDR does. I imagine our brain as if it has lots of little filing cabinet drawers that slam shut full of whatever trauma we have experienced, EMDR teases open a specific drawer and allows the effect of the trauma to escape our brain. 

I would recommend EMDR therapy to adoptees and anyone who has experienced trauma that is affecting them in the present day. Make sure you find a therapist you click with - a good therapeutic relationship is essential as trust between the two parties needs to be strong. In my opinion, the client should never be allowed to leave the therapy room in a distressed state, so I normally use visualisation resourcing exercises to calm emotions. 

EMDR therapy does not require talking in detail about the distressing issue, in fact a person embarking on EMDR therapy doesn’t have to actually remember the specific incident. Indeed, how can we remember what happened in the early days of life? ‘Floating’ back in our minds to the earliest memory of whatever feeling we are experiencing and focusing on that as the ‘target’ memory is enough for EMDR therapy to be successful. EMDR targets the unprocessed memory at the same time as the emotions, beliefs about ourselves, and associated body sensations. Bilateral stimulation (left and right movements - generally eye movements or tapping) activates the brain’s information processing system, allowing the old memories to be digested or reprocessed and stored in an adaptive way. I often use buzzers that the client holds one in each hand that pulse left and right, any bilateral stimulation is effective. Subjective Units of Distress (SUDS) are scored at the beginning and the end of the therapy and the goal is to see a shift in the bodily feelings and the overall levels of disturbance to a more adaptive state.

I hope this has been helpful and debunked EMDR somewhat!

David Benjamin

www.davidbenjamintherapy.com

Photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash