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 […]
Tag: adoptee voices
We should be asking whether lifelong legal severance and irrevocability are necessary to achieve a safe early environment.
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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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. […]