Today I turned 55. That’s 54 years 11 months and 24 days of being adopted. I spent 7 days with my mother before I was whisked away to Somerset. Somerset is a beautiful county; I live on the edge of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and open my curtains to the glorious Quantock Hills […]
Category: Adoptee Voices
We should be asking whether lifelong legal severance and irrevocability are necessary to achieve a safe early environment.
“With the voices of adopted adults being heard across the world, and the messaging being conveyed, it is imperative that adoption as we know and understand it, evolves. Coram IAC will continue to drive understanding and best practice, as highlighted in the EurAdopt conference, Coram IAC hosted in April 2024 attended by delegates from all […]
Adoptees who endure horrendous cruelty in so-called ‘forever families’ are too often blamed for the disruption and breakdown. And when we are told it is due to our defective genes, we are vulnerable to believing and internalising these myths for life.
Children are not abusers. Adopters are trapped not by their acquired property, but by their own fear of failure, and fear of shattering their family fantasy beyond repair.
A couple of years ago I came across classes for adopters on nonviolent resistance (NVR). At first I wondered “what are they protesting?” I was horrified to find out that the term was being used in relation to parenting adopted children. The idea of nonviolent resistance was first used by Gandhi and was adopted by […]
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Press release
Founding members of the Adult Adoptee Movement met with Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and members of her team on Thursday 4th December.
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My Dad’s Voice
My mother was a teenager when I was born in the early 1970s. She was so young that my existence was illegal. Maybe I was a mistake. Maybe I was the product of rape. I don’t know. Either way, that sits heavy. I like to think that she was doing her best in impossible circumstances. […]
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Long Lost Family, again
I admire those who are able to watch the special ‘mother and baby home’ episodes of Long Lost Family, and I applaud the people who are bringing these stories to light, but I just can’t. Like many adoptees, I find the show emotionally manipulative, ‘trauma porn’ (or worse, adoption propaganda). My life, the information that […]
I had my culture, heritage, history and family removed from my life by adoption and a phone call to an ineffectual, unfit for purpose therapy service isn’t going to fix that.