How I Met My Mother

A couple of weeks ago I had a rather bruising experience on Twitter. A complete stranger replied to a post within a conversation I was having declaring "adoption is always wrong". Being adopted, I took issue with this, and this was met with a stream of sneering abuse where I was accused of being brainwashed, of working as a "propagandist" for adoption, and told that my only purpose in life was to "fill the gap of your mother's infertility."

"Have you been to Twitter before?" I hear you cry. And yes, fair enough, I know that Twitter is the place angry people go to take their problems out on complete strangers. Nonetheless it felt like a very strange attack - this man genuinely felt that my experience was somehow illegitimate, because it was a happy one, and others came out to show their support for him.

Adoption is by its very definition complicated. It is not "always wrong" just as it is not "always right" - where cases of babies being snatched from unmarried and underage mothers in too-recent history are shocking, modern-day cases of children being left with natural parents, perhaps out of some misguided sense that biology is always best, who then abuse and sometimes even kill them are equally so. Adoptees' experiences vary hugely, just as, let's face it, do those of absolutely everyone else - those living with their natural parents in the perfect two-children-and-a-dog household in their semi in Hemel Hempstead may well have the picture-book childhood, but there could be terrible abuse going on behind the scenes; many people in single parent families, some with step-parents, some without, grow up happy and fulfilled, others do not. I have friends who were raised by grandparents, siblings or in foster care - all had different experiences that were neither wholly negative or wholly positive. Life is, like it or not, the luck of the draw.

In that draw, I effectively lost my first ticket then won the lottery simultaneously. On the one hand, I was born into potentially hopeless circumstances of which I have become aware retrospectively but which, in short, meant that my mother was completely unable to care for me, and adoption was considered the safest option, and the environment in which I was most likely to thrive. I already had a brother in care, a violent father, and a mother in turmoil. It was that mother, on the advice of a social worker, who agreed to let me go - in doing so, she gave me the greatest gift any mother can give: a life.

I make no apology for living a happy and fulfilling life, no matter how many strangers on the internet (at one point there were four of them shouting at me) tell me I had "lost my identity". I had not. Every one of us is unique, the person we become and to an extent the person we choose to be. Like everyone else I am the sum of all my experiences - the loving mother who agreed to relinquish me, and the amazing parents who brought me up. I am very well aware that the result was a privileged upbringing, in a nice house with a lot of love and nice things and music lessons and any hobby I wanted to try, a host of opportunities I would not have had if I had been in and out of care. A lot of the people I encountered online seemed to see everything as very black and white, where blood ties are everything and the alternative is inferior. But the world is not black and white, it is a hundred shades of grey and beige with the occasional flash of colour, and nothing is ever perfect. Yes, Social Services could probably have offered my mother more support, but would that have been "better" for me? It would certainly have been different, but I don't think it would have been better.
I do regret some elements of my adoption - not that it happened, but how it was done. I spent years fretting about a birth mother about whom I knew nothing, and when I did finally find out more I realized these fears were not unfounded. I recently spoke about this in detail in a BBC interview My adoption was all agreed before I was born. When I read my file, four years ago in a cold basement office in Blackburn, I was drawn to the words "mother wished for daughter to be adopted. Mother has never seen her." On finally meeting my mother recently I asked if she had really never even laid eyes on me. It was true, she said. When I was born I was taken into another room. Not only could she not hold me, she couldn't even look at me - they were worried this would make me want to keep me. As a woman of child-bearing age I find this unimaginably cruel to the point it almost causes me physical pain. When I was three she approached the agency and asked if she could have a photograph of her little girl. They said no.

There is a lot wrong with a system that allows this (though I hope things have improved in the 35 years since I was born). Adoption should be a good thing, a positive thing, even when it comes out of the darkest of places or the worst abuse. Everyone should be involved and supported as far as possible. In an ideal world adoption would be as portrayed in Juno, but of course, this is fictional. My mother was failed by this system, a system that did the best for me but forgot about her. She did not matter to them, and they failed her.

I finally met my mother last week, four years after reading my file, four years after finding out that she had given a name to the baby she was not even allowed to see (Kelly Marie). I had been nervous about doing so, partly because of what I had read - when a baby is adopted it is not without very good reason - and so I left it a long time, maybe even longer than I should. But she was - she is - lovely. She is a warm, friendly, chatty person with a huge smile, and an excellent hugger. Within minutes of meeting me she stressed to me that my adoptive parents were my "real" parents, that they had brought me up and that she understood that. She explained to me again - openly - about some of the problems when I was born, that she had not wanted to give me up, but that she had no choice, and that she had done what was best for my wellbeing. We had lunch together and we went shopping in the market. I bought a jumper, she bought some earrings. It was a happy day. It was, as far as was possible, a normal day - so much so that afterwards I almost felt cheated of my emotions, as they were not as strong or as in turmoil as I had prepared for.

We cannot have or change the past, and I at least do not want to. I am content with the one I have - every happy, sad, beautiful, painful, complicated piece of it. But we have the present and we have the future. We have both grown up, we have loved, lost and learned. Next week is Adoption Awareness Week, and I stand before you as one product of adoption - proud, happy, as imperfect as the next person but secure in who and where I am. The only regrets I have are that the system was not kinder to the lady who gave me the greatest gift in the world: my life.