Last month I was in the UK edition of Grazia magazine talking about post-adoption grief aka post-natal depression.

Here is the full Grazia piece

Here are a few things that have happened since then:

1. My parents read it and didn’t disown me ;) I was shaking like a leaf until my mum had been to be newsagent and texted me! (Of course we should feel free to express our truth, but it’s still scary. And I’ve come a long way since I was too frightened to start an anonymous blog.

2. My birth mother read it and said she has been thinking about writing her story down for a while and might give it a go. I said I can’t recommend it enough. She is also an adoptee.

3. I got trolled by someone saying I am in the fog. Obviously they didn’t read the piece properly as in it I state that I was in the fog before I had my children, but now I’m very much “out”. This was a rare opportunity to get a piece about adoption BY AN ADOPTEE in a mainstream publication and so I trod more lightly than I would in this blog, for example.

   And as Brené Brown says:

   “It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is in the arena.”

4. So many adoptees have got in touch to thank me, a section of their comments are pasted below. Thank you to everyone who took the time to write to me, I appreciate it and it helps me to feel less alone too, so it’s a virtuous circle! I managed to signpost a few people to services such as PAC-UK.

5. Thanks to my adoptee friends for all their encouragement with this including Joe, Matt, Haley from Adoptees On and Anne Heffron - who said to me we are only really alive if we are living our truth (she also said “fuck anonymity” which is a more pithy way of putting it!)

6. I’m no longer anonymous. As I told Al Coates when he interviewed me after The Open Nest conference 2019, there are so many others sharing - and if it helps people, I can be brave too. So, hi. I’m Claire and I blog about being adopted! :) If anyone from 7AF at my school is reading this, yes I’m still “on my soapbox”!!

7. A few old contacts came out of the woodwork including an old boss who is now an adoptive parent and suggested we meet for coffee. I’ve been asked to speak to adoptive parents before and declined but many adoptive parents with youngsters seem keen to get input from (older) adopted people, so let’s see. Either way it’s a positive step that older adoptees narratives are seen as valuable as I have heard adoptive parents say adoption has changed so much that adoptees from the closed era are like a different species.

Lovely and heart-breaking messages from adoptees

“I just wanted to send a message to say thank you for writing this blog. I'm a 33 year old adoptee (adopted as a baby), mum of one and pregnant with my second, and I identify with so much of what you say and your experiences. I'm not as far on as you are with dealing with all my feelings around being adopted, but having someone discuss it so openly and clearly has made me think about it more deeply than I have in a long time. So thank you, and I hope you are able to continue writing for a long time to come.”

“Hello, and thankyou very much for your article on post adoption grief. It explains everything I have felt on becoming a mother. I could go into great depth over what it felt like for me, from the point of wanting to conceive, telling my adoptive parents I was pregnant, feeling the physical connection with my daughter growing inside my body. The loss you speak of is something I have always felt and tried to explain to people. It's a sense of loss that travels with you through your whole life in everything you do. That loss of the natural connnection with a birth mother. My little girl who is now 2, absolutely loves me telling her how she used to be in my tummy, and when ever I tell her of my life before she was born, she says when I was in your tummy! It makes me think of how there is no thought of life without mummy. That even before birth she was with me. I think of the loss of this connection adopted people have with their birth mother. Thank you for your website.”

“I have yet to have a baby of my own but am already emotional at the thought of those first few hours/days/weeks when I didn’t have a mum... I can’t help but feel so sad for myself and thank god I wasn’t able to remember it. I remember when my biological mother told me she hadn’t held me and I had to fight the lump in my throat and the tears from falling. Even though she said it was because she never would have let go I still felt she should have.”

Please leave your comments below on the piece, I would love to hear from you if you are adopted and have experienced any challenges around becoming a parent.