A force to be reckoned with
Larry, aged 16, is glad that adoption was there as an option for him.
I was adopted at a fairly young age (as a toddler), and cannot remember first hand the adoption experience. I have, however, been given numerous scrapbooks and photos which were taken before and after my adoption, and I have also been told about my birth family, my time in foster care and my early years in my adoptive family; from that I can piece together the majority of the events that took place during my adoption.
As I understand it, I am not my birth mother’s husband’s child. I look very different from my half-siblings as they appear in the photos I have: I am very fair skinned and they are very dark.
Nevertheless, as I have grown and my adult features have developed, I realise that I resemble my birth mother facially. Although few people would guess now that I am not my adoptive mother’s child, I do not look much like some of my adoptive siblings. However, on these grounds, I feel no sense of alienation from my adoptive family, and no sense of identification with my birth family. Educationally, culturally and emotionally, I am definitely a child of my adoptive parents.
I was born very prematurely, probably because of my birth mother’s drug misuse, and I have a degree of physical disability. I am quite sure that if I had stayed with my birth family, not only would I have felt unwanted within that family, I might not even have survived.
Fortunately, when I became very ill, shortly after my discharge from hospital at the age of three months, my birth mother took me straight back to the hospital, and never came back for me. I believe that she didn’t so much abandon me as leave me where she knew I would be safe, and hope that a more suitable family would be found for me.
I was lucky that a wonderful short-term foster family was found for me, and that it wasn’t too long before a very determined and efficient social worker identified a permanent family, and got me placed with the minimum of delay. My adoptive parents were specifically hoping for a premature baby boy, and had a wide experience and acceptance of disability, so I was ‘just what they were looking for’ to complete their family. It has been an excellent match, and it has never occurred to me to wish myself elsewhere. (Well, except when my sisters pry into my private affairs or my mother moans at me for running up large phone bills!)
I suppose it isn’t out of the question that one day I might want to find out more about my birth family, but for the moment, I feel just like everybody else, and just want to get on with my life. I’ve had opportunities, experiences and education that I would never have had with my birth family and I have always felt loved and wanted for who I am.
All my four siblings, both adoptive and foster sibs, came from birth families who would have struggled to bring them up, even with lots of support from outside. All of them, one way or another, were ‘special needs’ placements, and, even though we must look a funny lot when we are all out together (even my brother-in-law is physically disabled), we are a real family, and a force to be reckoned with (we even have five special needs adopted dogs). Thank goodness adoption was there as an option for us. My desire is to do my bit (when I begin my career as a journalist, which is what I aim to be) to ensure that adoption into strong, loving families continues to be an option for all the children who still need it.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in November 2004.
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Last updated: 27 April 10
