Resources for being adopted
Here you will find articles made up of personal stories, practical advice and reviews of published material. I created this resource in the hope it would help adopted people in search of answers and a feeling of belonging. Please get in touch if you are adopted and need any further support.
Rejection #4 (2020)
Deep down I know this will be my last attempt. I know because time moves mercilessly on -my birth mother is turning 80 next month. I know because I am ready to move forward, I can feel it in my bones. I’ve done a lot of healing in the last four years and it’s time. Life is short and precious, this is not how I want to spend my remaining time. I know because I’m facing open heart surgery and am ‘getting my affairs in order’ just in case.
Waking Up To Being Adopted
I’ve had an article published in the Hoffman Institute UK monthly magazine, and so thought I would share it here.
Grasping For Connection (2011)
I’m sitting at my computer when the world grinds to a temporary halt. I stare at the screen trying to make sense of it with a scrambled brain and pounding heart. Linked In, of all things, has been the cause of this suspension of reality. It seems like hours but is probably less than a minute. The rest of the screen reduces to pixels as the message throbs at me. My mouth has turned dry and everywhere else is sweating. I’ve had contact from someone who is probably my half-sister.
Rejection #3 (2003)
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here. My heart is pounding, my head aches and my stomach is going like a washing machine. Part detective, part stalker. I’m in my car in a street in Isleworth. Strategically parked about fifty metres from the front door of a house my birth mother apparently lives in. How did I end up here?
Primally Wounded Or Not?
A fellow adoptee, Simon Benn, and I had a conversation recently about the impact Nancy Verrier’s book, Primal Wound, had on us. It was recorded as one of his regular podcasts and I’d though I would share it here.
Born For This (2021)
“I am the luckiest man in the world. I found what I was born to do.” The words of Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill, or ‘Brother Blue’ as he was better known as. As I read them I smiled and realised he had a message for me. At nearly 57 I am finally ready to hear these words and believe that I may soon be able to say them too.
Rejection #2 (1990)
Playing the detective satisfies on so many levels. It’s a puzzle to solve, it’s a secret to bear, it’s an adventure to have, it’s a mother to find. I‘m not going to bother looking for my dad. I’ve decided he is a peripheral figure, a sperm donor if you like. It’s my biological mother I’m hunting and nothing is going to stop me! Except of course, me, I need to play it cool, not appear to needy. “I’m doing this for her” I say it so many times I have convinced myself. So I start, then stop, then re-start, then pause; pendulating between search and avoid, like a child moving their hand towards a fire.
Who Am I? (1987)
I’m lost. The world seems an alien place, like I don’t belong here. But if not here then where? I’m alone. My mum is busy, my dad absent and my sister building a new life both inside and outside her womb. I’m on strike(link) so my moorings have come loose and I’m floating around without power or purpose. I’ve messed up with my girlfriend. I can’t talk to my mates, it’s too pathetic.
In Appreciation Of The Primal Wound
About ten years ago my coach at the time (the wonderful Wil Pennycook) tentatively offered me the idea that I have an unhealed wound deep within me. I accepted the suggestion and our work moved on, but it has only been since reading The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier that the significance of that tentative idea became apparent to me.
Adoption Therapy
I came across this book by chance and thought it was worth describing here. It is a collection of 16 essays written by clinical practitioners and their clients on the topic of processing and healing what they describe as ‘post adoption’ issues.
Journey Of The Adopted Self
This book, written by Betty Jean Lifton in 1994, focuses on three stages of the journey that adopted people take in “a quest for wholeness” – the subtitle of the book. It’s an unapologetically American study of the authors own experience of being adopted, along with a large amount of research. Despite its age and non-UK feel I would say it is well worth a read, mostly because what Lifton describes really resonated personally with my own journey.
Blood Is Thicker Than Water (1986)
“Obviously your mum can’t love you as much as mine loves me”. A simultaneous slap in the face and punch in the guts. One of my best friends had casually destroyed me. Too angry to think, I blurt out “Why do you say that?” “Because there’s no blood connection he simply replies as though it was the most obvious thing in the world”. Lost in fear and rage I ranted that he was talking bollocks. But the damage had been done.
Private Facebook Groups For Adoptees
On-line groups can provide support, advice and a sense of belonging and community. There are a number of private groups on Facebook the have been set up specifically to cater for the needs of adopted people. Facebook may not be to everyone’s liking but there is no doubting the benefit it can offer in terms of connecting people of similar experience, outlook or interests. Here I review the three groups I am currently a member of.
The Primal Wound
Pretty much everyone I have met has suggested that The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier is the definitive source of insight for adopted people who are trying to figure out why they feel something isn’t right with themselves. Having read it myself I have to agree.
Waking Up With Hoffman (2016)
I signed up for something called the Hoffman process, having been recommended it by my coaching supervisor as a way of access my “complex defensive structures”. As part of the pre-work, my teacher asked to me hold a possibility gently and with curiosity. Based on her own life experience, as well as what she had learned from teaching the process over many years, my teacher offered me a hypothesis that my first two weeks on this planet were akin to a near-death experience.
The Fairweather Fairytale (1975)
Proud to be adopted!! That was my script growing up. I’d known I was adopted all my life. My parents, who loved me dearly, did a great job in getting me to understand how I had come to be theirs. Their chief weapon was a book, read to me on hard rotation (or so it seemed) throughout my early years.
Wounded At Birth (1964)
A few years ago a teacher told me that being adopted at birth was like a near death experience (link to article 2016). I wrote the following blog in response to that. If it is not completely factual, neither is it a work of fiction. If it was a film, the makers would put a caption up at the start saying “Based on a true story”.