I think lucky is a word that means so many different things to those who’ve experienced adoption. I feel very lucky to have been chosen to be mum to our daughters. Our family are lucky to have our girls in our lives. But they aren’t lucky to have been adopted. Their start in life was full of loss and trauma.

It’s a term that people often use to describe adopted children, saying they’re lucky to have been adopted. I hope it’s a well-meaning comment, but it shows how far we still have to go in terms of raising awareness around adoption.

Chloe’s perspective on what lucky means for her is humbling.

Lucky

Perhaps some young people don’t understand what it means to be adopted and be “in the system” until they’re older. But I always knew.

Adopted at eight years old, I worked out early on what foster care was. I accepted I’d move around continuously and that eventually, leave the system. I also understood that I was… lucky.

Being in foster care was a fairly confusing and upsetting time for me. It was “decided” that every second Thursday, I would be allowed to meet my birth mother.

At first, I’d be overexcited and sometimes even be physically sick before she arrived. Soon after, it turned to a case of absence. She stopped turning up, and this fact would make me so ill that on the day after the contact, I’d again become very ill.

My foster carer soon became my long-term carer, and from this time, I have a lot of memories. I’m not sure if this is the same for all of you. But for me, I felt that my foster carer and I formed a kind of mother-daughter bond, which, as we all know, includes both good and bad times.

Memories of foster care

Strangely, some of my clearest memories are the weirder ones.  For example, I’m extremely glad to see the back of haggis; my arch nemesis. It was a Halloween night, and I was told that I wasn’t allowed to go out trick or treating unless I ate my haggis, which she knew I hated. Maybe it was a test, but I’ll never know.

However, I’ve also got lots of good memories, which balance the bad. For example, our trips to Edinburgh zoo, Chill Factor in Manchester (sledging/ skiing) and my all-time favourite, horse riding.

Can I trust you with a secret, reader? My biggest memory with horse riding was when my brother’s pony handler let go of his pony momentarily, and the horse spooked, making him fall halfway off his pony. It then started to canter off with him. I know that this seems to be a weird thing to put in a blog, but my point is that memories are weird; you can’t choose what sticks.

Foster care is definitely not convenient or the best thing to go through. But if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to make good memories and look back at that time with fondness.

Head to the adoption section to read more interviews and articles written by adoptees sharing their experiences.

Introduce yourself and your family 

I’m Suzy. I live with my husband and our two daughters who are full birth siblings.

How often do you have contact with birth family?

We do annual indirect contact every summer. We usually get any replies a few months after we’ve sent ours.

How does this happen? 

It happens via a written update. I write it electronically at the moment and send it to the post adoption team at our agency. They then forward it to birth family and sibling’s families.

We had asked for direct contact with the sibling born in between our two. We had been asked if we wanted to be considered for him, but decided it wasn’t the right thing at that time for our family. We asked if direct contact could be considered but it was completely overlooked by the local authority. As was indirect contact at the start and we had to push for this to be set up.

Eldest has met one of her older sisters. We had a few years where we attended an adoption event set up by our agency. Our social worker knew a sibling would be attending with her parents, so we were introduced to the parents. At the event the second year, eldest was actually sat beside her sister as they got their faces painted.

I found that really emotional because the sibling’s family hadn’t told their daughter about her younger sister. We had to respect their decision, but it made me really sad, because that would have been the perfect way for them to start to get to know each other. They live less than five miles away, so direct contact would have been very easy.

We didn’t go the last year the event was held because our eldest had been looking at her life story book a lot and would have recognised her sister from her photo.

What kind of things do you include in the letters? Do you send anything else like photos or pictures drawn by your children?

I find the updates quite hard to write because I want to share how wonderful the girls are, but I don’t want to be insensitive. I can’t imagine what it’s like for birth mum to get an update about how two of her daughters are doing. I want her to be happy to read the content, but I don’t want her to think I’m showing off at how well they’re doing.

It tends to be likes, dislikes, sharing their personality and how they get on together. I know that birth mum was very pleased when she was told they were going to be placed together, so I write quite a bit on their relationship. I tend not to write specifics in terms of holiday locations and focus on activities like going to the beach or a train ride.

This year eldest is six and so has a much better understanding of her birth history. She’s currently talking a lot about her brothers and has asked if she can draw them a picture, so we’ll include that this year.

Do your children get involved with writing the letters?

I currently write the updates, but I hope that as the children get older, they’ll want to be involved more. It would be nice if they wrote their siblings letters and hopefully get replies. It’s a great way to start to develop their relationship so that there’s something to build on easily when they’re ready to meet.

Have you requested any help and support in connection with contact from your agency? If so, what sort of help did you receive?  Did it do what you needed it to?

We haven’t asked for any help yet. I’ve found blogs and articles in the magazine really helpful. An Introduction to Life Story Work for Adoptive Parents, written by Dr John Simmonds, Director of Policy, Research and Development at CoramBAAF, is really helpful if you’re just starting out with life story work and contact.

I am going to ask for some advice this year about photographs. Our contact agreement is just for letters, but eldest has asked to see up-to-date photos of her siblings, and she’d like them to have more photos of her and her sister. I also think direct contact may be something they both want to have with the siblings who live close to us, in the not-too-distant future. That will have to be done initially through post-adoption support, but I really hope, if the children want it to happen, it’s something that is supported by everyone.

Do you get any replies from birth family or siblings?

Initially, we got replies from one sibling and then the sibling between our two. Unfortunately, last year, we didn’t get any replies at all, which is really sad. Our agency became part of a regional agency. so I’m hoping the replies are there, but have just not been forwarded to us. I’ll chase it up when we send out the letter this year.

Unfortunately, we’ve never had anything from birth family. I’m really sad for our children about that because I think it would help them as they get older and understand things more, to be able to read a letter from their birth mum.

If you get replies, do you read them to your child?

The last time we got replies from siblings, our eldest daughter was too young to understand. As we explore life story work more, we’ll read them to her. If we get replies this year and going forward, we’ll read them to the children as and when we get them.

When your child came home, did they have any memory of their birth family?

No, our eldest daughter was nine months old and our youngest was six months. They didn’t live with their birth family and had very little contact with them when they were in foster care.

If no, what age were they when you started life story work? 

Eldest was about two and a half when we started introducing the concept of her growing in her birth mum’s tummy and our hearts. I think she was about three when we started going through her book. I was terrified about how she’d react to knowing she had siblings, but she coped with it really well. You can read more about our experience of how it went the first time we showed her the book.

Our eldest daughter has always asked questions whenever she wanted to about her birth family. Questions tend to focus on her siblings, her brothers in particular. She’s recently been asking if she can go and see them when the virus is gone so she can give them a hug. I really hope they know about her and her sister, and they’re asking about them. But at the moment, we’ve got no way of knowing if that is the case or not.

The only thing that our eldest has struggled to process has been the fact that she didn’t grow in my tummy. When we first started doing life story work, she got very upset when I said she didn’t grow in my tummy. That broke my heart. When she looks through her book, she doesn’t ask any questions about her birth parents, but always asks about her siblings. Hopefully, as she gets older, she’ll be curious about them too.

What kinds of things did you use to support life story work?

Both children have a book created for them by their foster family, and they have an “official” life story book. Eldest doesn’t have a later life letter, but the one done for our youngest will be used for both of them because the circumstances were more or less the same. Eldest’s social worker left the agency just after placement, and despite lots of promises, the later life letter was never done by anyone else. We agreed with our youngest’s social worker that one letter would be used for both of them.

A later life letter is a letter written by your child’s social worker, explaining why their birth family couldn’t look after them. I think it’s something the children will read when they’re much older – I found it an emotional thing to read.

Eldest has access to her life story book and will look at it when she wants to. She knows all of her siblings’ names and loves to look at their photos. We haven’t read through the words with her because she’s still too young to understand, but we will as she gets older. We’ve found books like “The Family Fairies” by Rosemary Lucas and “Blanket Bears” by Samuel Langley-Swain really helpful in terms of explaining the roles of social workers and foster families.

Both children were with the same foster family, and it helped our eldest understand their role a bit more when we met them again for introductions with our youngest. Our eldest had no memory of them, but knew them from their photos in her books. The foster family were over the moon to see our eldest again, and it made introductions so much easier. We keep in contact with them via email, and I send regular updates and photos.

Have you accessed any type of help or support with life story work?

No we haven’t.

How has your child reacted to life story work?

At the moment, our eldest is taking everything in her stride. She asks questions when she wants to, and we do our best to answer them honestly, in an age-appropriate way. I expect that things will get more difficult for them to deal with as they understand more about their birth family and their history. I hope that they will always feel they can talk to us about it and that they know we’ll support them 100%.

I hope that one day, they’ll understand how we’ve all played different roles in their lives, but we’re all their family who love them very much.

 Head to the adoption section to read more articles about life story work, introductions, matching and more.

It’s so important that adopters understand the importance of contact for birth families. It’s sometimes the case that they don’t feel able to reply to our letters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t cherish every word that’s written. Sammy does receive some help and support to write her letters, but I don’t think that’s always available in a way that encourages birth parents to reply.

How often do you have contact with your child?

I have indirect via letterbox yearly.

How does this happen?

I get two letters via the letterbox team in my local authority.

What kind of things do you include in your letters? Do you send anything else with them?

I send photos of me, her cat, anything new in the family, and a birthday card. I always ask about health, school, wellbeing, likes and dislikes, her birthday, and Christmas. I ask about her pets and how her adoptive parents and brothers are. I also add memories from home and her cat and fish here and anything they have told me. Her adoptive parents write first then I reply. I include anything I’ve been up to too.

Have you requested any support from the local authority in connection with contact?

I receive help with my letters via the letterbox team. They help me with what is good to put in, but nothing around how it works.

If you haven’t received any support from the local authority have you received any support from another organisation?

Yes. I’ve received support and currently still do from PAC-UK. It helps as they don’t judge like social services do and see me as a parent, not a failure.

What do you get in reply to your contact letters?

They write first which is two letters, one from the adoptive parents and a hand written one from my daughter.

What type of information is in the letters? Do you think there’s enough or would you like more?

I get told a lot of information about my daughter’s daily life. Their letters are always two pages long and her own is a page long. I feel I get told a lot which I love and am really grateful for.

How old was your child when they left your home?

She was three-and-a-half when placed with her potential adopters and six when the adoption order was granted.

Were you asked if you wanted to add information to her life story book? If yes, what did you add?

I asked them and they agreed. They asked me to get photos and information about me, her family, her dad, pregnancy, birth milestones, later life letter, and any wishes I had for her future. 

Is there anything else you’ve given her such as an item of your clothing or keepsake?

My daughter has my brown bear called Benji. I got him from Santa one Christmas Eve as I was ill in hospital. I gave him to her and I’m told she knows what he means and that she has him. She also has a locket with a picture of us and her cat.

Did you get any support with life story work? 

The family practitioner came to my house and we put it together. She had worked with me and my daughter from when they became involved up to the final goodbye. She and my daughter had a good relationship. She showed me the information up to her being in foster care and what she put in about that. Then I couldn’t see anymore as that was information about her adopters.

If you’d like to read more articles about adoption, health and well-being, and parenting, head over to the home page and have a look at what’s new. Head over to the life story section to read more articles about this subject.

We’ve been really lucky because both of our girl’s books are brilliant. They contain a fair amount of detail and explain things in a child-centred way. But the facts are there for them to read when they’re old enough to understand them

Both of our girls are growing up knowing that they are adopted and that their family doesn’t just include the people they see regularly. Our eldest has always been interested in this. She’s asked questions from the start and continues to now.

Our youngest is completely different. She’s not been interested in learning about her birth family. She likes looking at photos of herself when she was a baby, but she hasn’t been curious about anything else.

When I was approached by Sonja from Storydo to see if I’d be interested in creating a book for our youngest to help explain her birth history, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try a different way of explaining things to her. I was kindly gifted the book once I’d created it.

What is Storydo?

Storydo is a groundbreaking platform that allows all types of families to tell their unique stories and celebrate their family, simply by answering questions and uploading images.

The bespoke, hardcover, A4 book captures your child’s story and includes all the people and places that are important in your child’s life. It’s suitable for all types of families, from solo to nuclear to blended to adopted, celebrating their unique stories.

How it works

I started by choosing a design and then answered questions to build up our daughter’s life story and uploaded photos that fit the text. Some of the questions are open-ended and others can be changed to suit your child’s story better. I found the prompts and questions helpful to help me include all of the important information that was relevant to the section.

The Storydo Bookbuilder ‘writes’ text based on the answers and creates pages that you can edit as you go along. Although you have to answer the questions, there isn’t a lot to write so don’t worry about needing to be able to add in a lot.

There are thousands of possible pathways through the book depending on each family’s setup, so it really can tell each unique story allowing parents to decide what they would like to share.

The benefits of Storydo

There are many companies offering photobooks where you upload the images, add some words, and then your finished book is posted to you. Those types of books are a useful tool for life story work, particularly for younger children as they will enjoy looking at the photos and you can explain who is in them.

But as your child gets older, they need something more than that to be able to understand their birth history and the roles people like foster carers played in their early life.

Storydo books are designed to strengthen children’s identities. They also validate each child’s lived experience and family set-up by featuring them in a book. Research suggests that this can help children with self-esteem.

The language used has been created using experts to explain the more complex subjects such as adoption, bereavement, and gamete donation. The books are designed to explain and normalise less conventional family setups such as single, same-sex, and blended, and show that families are made up in lots of different ways. 

My experience of using Storydo

I found creating our book an easy process and added the photos as I went. If you want to be more organised, you could create a folder with images before you start. It took me a couple of hours to create in total, and then I read back through it several times and made a few tweaks.

Our youngest is five and is starting to show more of an interest in her birth family. We’ve read through the book several times with her and it does seem to have piqued her interest more than her “official” life storybook. She’s asked more questions, particularly about birth mum. It will be a useful tool as she gets older to explain the important people in her life.

You can get all the details about creating your book from Storydo’s website. I think it’s a great way of helping all children understand their history, not just for adopted children.

Family setups can be complicated and confusing for children. So being able to see their story in pictures and simple text can help them understand how their family came together.

If you enjoyed reading this article, why not buy me a coffee to help keep the magazine free for everyone to read? If you’d like to read more articles about adoption, health and well-being, and parenting, head over to the home page and have a look at what’s new.

Although the matching process can take some time, once you are matched, things tend to move quite quickly. You don’t have time to form a bond or attachment. You learn about their likes and dislikes. But you haven’t discovered those with them. They’ve been written in a report, or shared with you by the person who’s been the child’s main carer for months.

I think this is one of the parts of the adoption process that we adopters are least prepared for. So I hope reading about my experience helps others understand it’s normally not to feel love or attachment straight away.

It took me a while to love our daughter. After years of wanting to be a mum, I expected it all to be sparkles and loveliness. It took me a bit by surprise when I didn’t instantly fall in love. I wrote this post a while ago about how I felt.

Things have moved on a lot since then. I love my daughter more than anything else in the world. My heart melts when she says “love you mummy”. I can’t believe how far we’ve come since that first day when we met her.

Despite the overwhelming feeling of love I have for her, there are times when I still feel like we’re just borrowing her. Like we’ll have to give her back one day and that day is getting closer and closer.

I’m annoyed at myself for feeling like that. I love my daughter so much it hurts sometimes. She’s our world and she adores us. She’s a happy, secure, loving and mischievous little girl who is a huge part of our family and adored by everyone.

But recently there’s been a little niggle at the back of my mind that says she’s not really our daughter. Someone else gave her the gift of life and we’re just looking after her until she’s old enough to decide for herself.

I think I’m feeling this way at the moment because I’ve been really worried again about getting it right telling her about her history and her birth family. To be honest, I’m feeling quite overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

She was nine months old when we met her. Although she had a strong attachment to her foster family, she has no real memory of them. We’ve kept in touch via e-mail but not physically. She met her three eldest siblings when she was tiny but again, has no memory of them.

She’s growing up way too fast and I know now is the right time to gradually introduce more detail about adoption to her. Some will no doubt think we’ve left it too late already. But it hasn’t felt like the right time.

When I wrote this post last year, I thought it was the right time and that there’d be more questions from our daughter about her sisters. That would have been a natural way to start the ball rolling. However, she hasn’t asked any more questions.

As she grows up, I want her to know she’s adopted so that it isn’t a big deal. Obviously it is a big deal. But I don’t want it to overwhelm her or make her feel different because of it. Adoption is something that happened to her. It doesn’t define her.

I want her to feel that she can ask anything she wants about her history and we’ll answer in an age appropriate way. But I guess I’m frightened that once we start to tell her about her history, we’re going to start losing her.

Once she knows she has another family with brothers and sisters, she’ll not want us. She’ll want them. I know what we need to do and how to do it. It’s the actual starting it that terrifies me.

A big part of me also wants to protect her from her birth history. Her birth mum was the victim of circumstances which, to a large extent, were beyond her control. The situation she grew up in is very, very different to the childhood our daughter is having. I imagine learning about that will be very difficult for her.

Adoption is such a mixture of emotions. It feels like we’re on a rollercoaster ride at times. But seeing her beautiful smile makes it all worthwhile.

If you’d like to read more adoption stories, click here

During our preparation course, we spent a lot of time learning about contact and how important it is to keep it up. The social workers explained however hard we found it, it was in our future child’s best interests that we committed to it.  I’m pretty sure if we’d said at matching Panel we weren’t sure we’d want to keep up with indirect contact, the match to our daughter wouldn’t have been approved.

Unfortunately, the reality of contact for us hasn’t matched anything close to our expectations. Our daughter’s social worker left the agency just before the adoption order was granted. Another social worker was appointed so that all the local authority boxes were ticked.  But she knew very little about our daughter’s case.

Some of the work that should have been done for her life story book wasn’t. I chased it with our social worker several times but the work wasn’t done. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t the end of the world. I know what’s missing.  Based on the information we have, I’m sure I’ll be able to put something together.

An omission in the life story work is something we can address. Not organising contact at all is a whole different kettle of fish.

We struggled massively with our decision not to be considered as carers for our daughter’s little brother.  I’ve written here about how we came to that decision. One of the things that helped ease my conscience about saying no, was that our social worker said direct contact could be an option. That would mean our daughter could still have a relationship with her brother as they grew up.

We knew it would be up to her brother’s adopters, but we were confident that direct contact was going to be considered. We trusted the local authority to promote the relationship between our daughter and her brother.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

Contact wasn’t at the forefront of our minds in the months following our decision to say no to little brother.  We concentrated on our daughter and strengthening the bond within our little family of three.

Every now and then it did cross my mind and I wondered when we’d hear that contact was going to start.  We do our annual indirect contact in the summer. In the spring, I realised we still hadn’t heard anything about contact with little brother.  At the very least, I’d expected an updated agreement including him in the annual contact.  So, I emailed our social worker.  It’s probably something that should be dealt with by the post adoption team, but our social worker is really lovely so it was a good excuse to contact her.

I can’t begin to tell you how let down I felt by her reply.  She had nothing at all to do with family finding for little brother so it wasn’t her fault. But basically, contact of any type had been completely overlooked.  So there was no contact agreement in place and no discussions had taken place about direct contact.

Clearly, the local authority have messed up big time with this. But I do wonder why little brother’s adopters didn’t ask about letterbox contact. They’ll have learned about the importance of it during their training. Why didn’t they asked for it to be set up? I know it’s not the first thing you think about once you’re matched. But it’s such an important part of the process.

I’m annoyed with myself for not chasing it up sooner.  There’s no excuse for it other than I trusted that the local authority would do what they said they would.

Little brother’s family have been contacted and have said they are prepared to do an annual update. I really hope this will lay the foundations for direct contact in the future.

Clearly, I’m putting myself under too much pressure. I do that a lot. Whether your children are adopted or not, we’re only human. Yes, being a parent to an adopted child often means we need to parent in a different way to those who have birth children. But no parent can ever be perfect. So we will get some things wrong. But hopefully, the way we deal with that will teach our kids that we all make mistakes and that’s ok.

I was terrified the first time we formally introduced life story work to eldest. She was about three. If you want to find out how it went, you can read about it here. She’s now seven and I’m so proud of how she’s handled all the information we’ve given her about her birth family. To her, she’s known no different. She doesn’t remember the first time we told her she didn’t grow in my tummy which is how we wanted it to be.

Clearly, it’s a massive thing to find out you have another family. But I don’t want that to weigh my children down. I want them to be curious and feel they can talk to us about it all whenever they want. And feel whatever they need to feel about it. We can’t stop them being hurt and upset by it. Not being able to grow up with their birth family is trauma. But by being open with them, hopefully it will help them come to terms with it all.

At the moment, eldest is content to know she has a birth mum, dad, brothers and sisters who she’ll hopefully meet when she’s older. From time to time she looks at her life story book (it’s in her room so she can access it whenever she wants) and if she wants to ask questions, she does. She says that she loves them all and we’ve talked about why they can’t all live together, in very basic terms at the moment.

Youngest is two so we haven’t done any formal life story work with her yet, but we will be starting to introduce it soon. Eldest knows the history behind all of her and her sister’s names. She knows their birth family chose their second middle names and that if they want to use them as their first names, they can. At the moment she doesn’t like her birth first name because it’s normally a boys name. But that may change as she grows up and if it does, she can decide how she wants to use it.

Last summer, eldest had been looking at her life story book and said she wished she had a recent photo of her brothers and sisters. It was around the time we were due to send our annual update so I said I’d ask the lady who sends on our updates, if she’d find out if their parents would send us some new photos.

One of the things I wish we’d had more training about, is contact. And the contact agreement in particular. It was covered on our prep course, but it didn’t really prepare us for the realities of contact or that it might need to change as the children grow. I wish now I’d asked for there to be provision for things like photos to be regularly exchanged. When we signed the contact agreement, it was early on in placement. It was a very basic agreement that allowed for an annual exchange of letters. At that time, I hadn’t got my head round the enormity of life story work and how crucial things like photos can be.

Fast forward six years and eldest is desperate to see what her brothers and sisters look like now. Unfortunately, all responses to our annual updates have stopped. We’ve never had anything from birth mum which is very sad, but I kind of understand that. I can’t imagine what it’s like for her and I suspect that she’s not felt able to reply because of her circumstances.

However, I’m very angry and disappointed that none of the siblings’ parents have kept up with contact. Our request for photos has been met with complete silence. We haven’t had any letters back from them for over two years now. In some ways, doing it for a few years and then stopping feels worse than not doing it at all. Why have they stopped? And why can’t they see how important it is for their children to keep in contact with their siblings?

Unfortunately, we’ve had very little support from our agency with this. The pandemic hasn’t helped because staff are working from home or are on furlough. But my requests for them to encourage siblings’ parents to engage, haven’t been responded to. So I feel utterly helpless. Eldest wants to know how her brothers and sisters are doing. She wants to know what they look like. She wants to lay the foundations for having a relationship with them in the future.

Obviously, I don’t know the circumstances of the siblings’ families. There may be very good reasons why none of them are replying. But it’s so disappointing that we’re not getting supported with this by our agency. So, once things settle down a bit after the kids go back to school, I’ll be back in contact with them pushing for some kind of help.

I hate that our children are likely to suffer more pain and upset because of the lack of contact, and that it seems there’s very little I can do about it. For now, we’ll continue with what we have. We’ve had a few conversations with eldest about what she thinks her brothers and sisters look like now. Whether they’ve got long hair like her and her sister. Whether she thinks they’ll like to dance like they do. At the moment she’s not asking about her birth parents. She knows from their photos who they are, but I think she’s probably still too young to understand the role they play in her life. Hopefully that will come with time and she’ll be curious about them too.

I’d be really interested to hear about other people’s experience of this. What kind of support have your agency given to get contact up and running if siblings in particular don’t respond?

Having conversations about these types of issues is crucial. They help to make sure adopted children get the help and support they need to guide them through their journey of understanding their history and the part it plays in who they are.

Did you feel different to other children when you were growing up because you were adopted or because you were Asian, or both?

Both for sure. I grew up in a predominantly white neighbourhood and was one of only a few Asian students in elementary school through high school. Children could be so mean. I remember they would pull the edges of their eyes back toward their ears, and say, “Me Chinese, me play joke, my put pee pee in your Coke.” However, when I got to college and met other Asian people, I found they didn’t really accept me as one of their own.

When you’re young, you always think your personal situation – whether it’s being an only child, going to church on Sundays, etc. – is normal (for lack of a better word). It had never occurred to me that there was anything abnormal about the fact that my parents and I did not genetically mirror each other.

But the difference you feel being adopted goes further than that. It’s a million little things. For example, when my friends would have brothers or sisters, they would tell me their moms were in the hospital giving birth. I thought babies came from the airport since that’s where I remembered going to get my brother. I kept wondering, “What’s wrong with all these moms that they all seem to go to the hospital?”

Did you get any help or support with how you felt?

I think everyone I spoke to – parents, teachers, etc. – chalked the behaviour of other children up to standard teasing. “Just ignore them” was my mother’s go to advice. And perhaps in any other situation, that might have been the best advice. But when I was growing up, it seemed clear that children weren’t just making fun of the things that made me different, but for who I was. It reinforced the idea I already had that something was wrong with me.

Did you understand what love meant or were you unsure of what it was?

My understanding of love – like my understanding of what it means to be an adoptee – has evolved over the years. It’s another lifelong journey that I think all people go on. When I was younger, I think the way I understood love was through possessions – i.e. my mother has given me a toy, therefore she loves me. However, as I grew into a teenager, the things my mother did to protect me (which were done out of love) like setting curfew, not letting me hang out with certain people, etc. I saw as control.

For what seemed like a long time, I assumed love came from other people – that I would never be worthy of anyone or anything until I was loved by someone outside my immediate family. I needed someone to prove to me that I was worth it. The truest love, I’ve discovered, is the love you have for yourself. It’s what saved me.

Did you know any other adoptees when you were growing up? Did you feel able to talk to them about how you felt?

Growing up, my parents were friends with another couple who had adopted two girls from South America. I also had my brother, who is adopted. But, in all the time we played, trick or treated, or just hung out together we never spoke about being adopted. We were connected on this extremely rare level, but we never acknowledged it which I think is part of a larger desire we (as adoptees) feel to fit in. 

Based on your own experience, what help and support do you think should be available for adopted children / teenagers and adults?

When you’re an adoptee – especially a transracial adoptee – you’re balancing so many different identities. I would have liked some guidance, mentorship, and a community that centred around how to reconcile how the world sees you and how you see yourself, how to live in the in-between, and what it means to be adopted.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but is there anything you wish your parents had done differently that would’ve helped you to face the challenges you experienced as you were growing up?

I am not a parent, therefore I cannot speak to what it takes to raise a child. I do encourage adoptive parents to first listen, create a safe space for your adoptee to share, and to always seek out knowledge from adult adoptees.

It really brings home to me the difficult road my children have ahead of them as they learn more about their history and work out who they are and how it all fits together. Hopefully, by reading about Lauren’s and other adoptee experiences, we can be better prepared to help and support our children.

Do you have access to any documents from your adoption?

When I moved out, my mother gave me everything she had in from my adoption which, unfortunately, wasn’t a lot in terms of answering the questions I had.

What type of documents do you have?  Have they helped you understand why you were adopted?

There were copies of my parents’ marriage certificate, citizenship papers, the adoption application, etc. However, when I was doing research for Inconvenient Daughter, I contacted the adoption agency my parents went through and requested all records they had pertaining to my biological parents.

The only document that gave me insight was the INITIAL SOCIAL HISTORY form which had a brief summary of who my parents were (no names), why they chose to relinquish me for adoption, and some details about their lives.

If you don’t have any documents, is that because they aren’t available or because you haven’t wanted to see them?

I have no desire to be in reunion at this time and have not made an effort to obtain more documents. However, I imagine there might be additional information through the orphanage I was placed in in Korea.

If they aren’t available, is there anything in particular which you think would help you?

I feel like I’ve come a really long way in my adoption journey. As a young adoptee, I struggled to find the vocabulary to explain what I was going through. As an adult (sort of lol), I understand how the trauma of being separated from my biological mother as an infant has informed my identity and influenced my decisions.

All the work I have done since then – finding my voice, reconciling my cultural and racial identities, exploring what it means to be adopted – has really put me on the path to healing from the trauma of infant separation. I feel as if I have closure in terms of all the things I’ll be able to know versus the things I want to know with regard to my relinquishment.

In the UK, adopters usually write a yearly update to birth family. Birth family can respond if they want to. Does that happen in the US? If it does, did your parents do updates and did you get any response? Have you read them?

This is a difficult question so I’ll start with this disclaimer: I can only speak for myself and my personal experience with regard to any and all questions about adoption. I believe every adoptee’s journey and story is unique and would never presume to speak for the entire adoptee community.

That being said, I also cannot speak for every adoption agency’s policies. There are no standard and universal practices – such as writing yearly updates – that are implemented by adoption agencies with regard to contact with the biological family, as far as I am aware. It would seem to me that any policies like this would be implemented at the discretion of the adoption agency or the adoptive parents.

In the United States, we have closed adoptions (no contact with the biological family), open adoptions (the possibility of contact with the biological family), and hybrid versions of the two. I say “the possibility of” when speaking about open adoption because “contact” is usually either at the discretion of the adoptive parents, but is also dependent on how involved the biological parents seek to be.

My adoption was a closed adoption, and to my knowledge my parents have not sent yearly updates to my biological mother.

If it doesn’t, do you think it would have helped you to understand your identity better if it had been done?

For me, my identity and the search for my identity had nothing to do with my biological parents or my adoptive parents. My identity – and the issues I had with it – was not having a support system in place to guide me through what it means to be a transracial adoptee. To mourn the loss of my birth culture while simultaneously having my American culture thrust upon me. And not fully understanding how to exist in the in-between that so many adoptees find themselves in.

Having yearly updates sent to or from my biological mother would have certainly helped answer some questions, but I have to be honest and say I think it would have done much more harm than good.

Do you have any items from your birth family or that your birth family bought for you?

I do not.

If you don’t, would you have liked something?

I would have to say no.

In your opinion, if adopters have documents and keepsakes relating to their children’s adoption and from their birth family, do you think it’s best for adoptees to have access to these from an early age as and when they’re available, or is it better for them to be looked at altogether at an older age?

Since I am not a parent in any capacity, I can’t comment on when adoptive parents should share documents or keepsakes with adoptees.

However, as an adoptee, if my parents had access to documents or keepsakes, I would have liked to receive them at whatever age I inquired about their existence. I also would have preferred to look at these documents or keepsakes alone, but have my adoptive parents be close-by and available should I have had questions or needed support.

What age were you when you were adopted? 

I was three months old when I came from South Korea to the United States.

Can you remember being told you were adopted? If so, is it a positive or sad memory?

I’m not sure if it was a happy or sad memory – more jarring than anything else. It was my first day of kindergarten, and I was sitting at a round table with a few other children when a boy asked me why I didn’t look like my mother. When you’re a child, I think you accept your situation – whether it’s looking different from your parents, eating dinner at 5:00, or going to Sunday mass – as normal. In that moment, I realized there was something different about my family, and I remember being extremely frightened.

Did you feel like you could speak to your parents about adoption as you were growing up?

My parents made it very clear they were always open to my brother and me asking questions about our adoption. I would go a step further and say if we wanted to search, I’m 100% sure they would have supported us there too.

Were you able to ask them questions about your birth family?  Were they able to answer them?

One thing I think that’s common in most adoptees is that we’ve been raised by the gospel of adoption. We’ve been told from a young age how blessed and lucky we are, how miraculous and kind it is that our parents took in an unwanted child.

These notions of being blessed and lucky, at least for me, gave birth to a sort of obligatory gratitude. It’s not easy to ask you parents about the two people who were physically responsible for bringing you into this world. So, as much as I was curious about my biological mother and the circumstances surrounding my relinquishment, I felt a deep need not to rock the boat.

Did you and your family receive any support to help you understand your birth history? 

I like to think adoption has come a long way since the 80s, but since I haven’t adopted a child I can’t say for sure. I believe my parents did the best with the resources they had available to them, but I think more could have been offered in the way of support and community.

My adoption agency actually advised my parents not to tell me I was adopted – that I would just “know”. I hope adoptive parents now have much better resources and support systems in place to help their adoptee understand what it means to be adopted and how to reconcile the feelings that come with it.

Have you met your birth family?  

I am not in reunion and have no plans to be in reunion.

If there are unknowns about your history, how does that make you feel?

I believe two things – every adoptee journey is different, and the adoptee journey is lifelong. At this point in my journey, I feel I’ve accepted the fact there are some things I’ll just never know.

As a younger adoptee, I felt defined by those unknowns. Specifically regarding the reason behind my relinquishment. The fact that I didn’t know why I was placed for adoption haunted me and had a significant impact on how I perceived my self-worth.

From your own experience, how can adopters help and support their children through this, particularly when there’s missing information and gaps?

I think the most important thing any adoptive parent can do is create a safe space for their child to talk about their adoption. There are going to be things said and asked in that space that might hurt you or make you uncomfortable, but your child needs to know they can ask those difficult questions.

I could see my mother’s face change when I asked about my biological mother – I could see the pain move through her entire body. Obviously, it’s a natural reaction. But I think if you can try to control your reactions so that your child doesn’t feel bad about asking tough questions, they might be more likely to talk to you. Also, for the record, I am not a parent.

The topic for Lauren’s next feature will be about the types of documents she has access to from her adoption. If you’d like to ask her any questions about this, just comment below. Lauren’s debut novel, Inconvenient Daughter is available now from Blackwells