Debbie
I was born in London in 1968 and I am a transracial/intercountry adoptee. My birth mother was forced into relinquishing me for adoption to escape the fear of an honour killing back home in Kuwait. My maternal birth family had already tried to kill my Iranian birth father, he escaped.
I was placed in foster care through the Phyllis Holman-Richards Adoption Society and raised by a single mother in white rural Suffolk. Adoption at the age of sixteen led to me becoming a late discovery adoptee. Until that moment I hadn’t been told about my true identity.
I am an advocate for the rights of adoptees to know and have access to our biological information. The right to know our family medical history and the right to search for birth family, It took forty years for me to find both my biological parents.
I established an in person support group for adult adoptees based in North London. I am also a founder of the Transracial Adult Adoptee Network exclusively for transracial and intercountry adoptees to be in community and support one another.
Jo
I’m Jo (birth name Sarah). I was born in 1975. I was with my mother in hospital for a few days and in foster care for a few weeks. I found my father through DNA testing and we are in reunion. My mother does not feel able to meet me so I do not know my brothers.
I am an archivist and genealogist by background so I’m interested in all things records, tracing and history. I found my family with years of sleuthing and I want to help others to do the same, and for the process to be much easier.
The legal realities of current adoption practices, and the way we talk about adoption as a society, are harmful to children. I want to be part of changing the system to give children who need it permanence and love, without sacrificing their identity, family, medical history or heritage.
Liz
I’m Liz Harvie. I was born in January 1974 in Northampton, and spent 10 days with my mother, before being moved to a foster home. At 8 weeks old, my adoptive parents met me and took me back to their home in Birmingham.
I’ve always known I was adopted. As a child I was deeply curious about my beginnings and my roots, which led me to search for my birth mother in my early 20s. We met in 2003, when I was 29. I met my birth father shortly afterwards.
In 2023, I wrote a book, Unspoken, about my lived experience and the silent truth behind my lifelong trauma as an adoptee. I am, since 2023, estranged from my adoptive family.
I am proud to be a founding member of the Adult Adoptee Movement.
We hope to create a safe space here, for adoptees to feel seen, heard and validated.
Sally
I was born in 1967 in Surrey in an NHS hospital to an unmarried mother assigned a Surrey County Council Moral Welfare Officer and taken for adoption at six weeks.
I was in my fifties when I fully acknowledged the impact that adoption had on my life and wellbeing. Within the last few years, I am in contact with my birth family.
I advocate for access to government, policy and law makers through those with existing influence in adoption, journalists and others to reveal the harm caused by adoption, implement essential support for adult adoptees, and replace adoption with family preservation – and only where this is not possible, less harmful forms of permanence without the erasure and pretence of adoption.
Vanessa
I was born in 1968 in England to unmarried parents in their twenties and adopted domestically as an infant via the Chelmsford Diocesan Moral Welfare Association. I did not consider the impact of my early life and adoption until poor mental health in my early fifties forced me to finally seek help. I then sought to connect with other adoptees via social media, Vik’s weekly Zoom chats, and others participating in the JCHR inquiry.
Within AAM I work on the website and newsletter, and have also been researching the early history of adoption in the UK, with a particular interest in voluntary adoption societies and the women who founded them. I am also interested in discourse about adoption and the ways in which those with power in this space have sought to control the conversation, policy and practice. You can read my occasional writing at adoptionhistory.uk.
Vik
I was born in 1971 to an unmarried 18 year old mother and a Jamaician father. I was born in Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield and I stayed with my mother for 7 days before being placed with a family in Somerset. My mother died aged 38 before I could meet her and my father died in 2020 before I could meet him. I am in reunion with my siblings though.
Meeting other adoptees for the first time for me was life changing and my passion is community and getting adoptees together. Being among those who ‘get it’ really does help us on our healing journey.
I ran an Adoptee only zoom chat for 5 years starting at the height of the Covid pandemic, during that time I was lucky enough to meet hundreds of adoptees from all over the world.