Please note, some of the stories featured include descriptions of distressing topics and content that is upsetting or triggering. Some of the stories also include language that is considered outdated, offensive, and unacceptable today.
Chris in 1947 shortly after his adoption.
I was conceived in the dying embers of WWII and born in November 1945 in Hackney Hospital, London, staying with my birth mother in the Hope Lodge Salvation Army hostel in Clapton, before being part of their policy of forced adoption after 11 months. With a lot of adoptions taking place after war-time affairs, it took a long time to place me.
I was adopted into a loving family in Kent, but only discovered I was adopted at the age of 36, with no early memories at all of the adoption process, but a growing awareness of being different in some way.
Having spent the first half of my life as an only child, not knowing who I was, I spent the following half trying to discover my identity and heritage, only fully successful in a life-changing discovery earlier in this my 80th year.
Early on the search, I found and met my birth mother, and discovered I had six half-siblings, still maintaining contact with that family. That search was in 1989, when none of the registers were available online, but it was rapid, partly thanks to my training in science and research.
More recently, an Ancestry DNA test I did after my birth mother died revealed I was half-Welsh, with my father not being the person my mother told me he was. This led to a further, seemingly futile search, until a lovely first cousin on the Welsh side contacted me through Ancestry this year. We met up and he told me who my father was, giving me a picture of his uncle, who looked like me, thereby making me feel complete.
Unfortunately, my birth father had died young, in 1948 in Kent, a miner who had come from Wales to Kent to work before and after the war in the not very successful Dover coal mine. Who knew there was a coal mine in Dover?
I am a retired clinical psychologist, specializing in Post Traumatic Stress and blocked memories for adult survivors of childhood abuse and veterans of war zones, without realizing I had my own blocked memories.
My story reflects both the positive side of adoption, giving me a much better life than I would otherwise have had, and the negative side of the emotional impact of trying to bury family secrets.
On the positive side, I had wonderful adoptive parents, who had their own reason for keeping my adoption secret. They helped me get a much better education than I would have otherwise had. My education came thanks also to the post-war direct-grant system that allowed me and others from working-class backgrounds to be educated for free at good private secondary schools, in my case Eltham College in south-east London. I then went on to get a first degree and a PhD in psychology, also at no cost. I went on to get two very rewarding careers, 20 years teaching and researching at University level, followed by another postgraduate degree in clinical psychology, allowing me to pursue another 30 year career in the NHS, helping others with serious emotional problems.
“The search for my birth father still looming large 75 years on”. Chris and friend, Yorkshire 2024.
On the negative side, although good at my jobs, and enjoying helping others, I had trouble with my own sense of who I was and holding on to relationships. The familiar adoption theme of expecting to be rejected was always there for me in relationships, until very recently, when finding out who my birth father was made me much more sure of who I was and where I came from for the first time in my life.
I hope my story will help others, including other adoptees and those brave enough to adopt. Bottom line for me now is that I’ve had a good, emotionally rewarding life, and I’m still learning.