Why being adopted was the best thing that ever happened to me - Christa Ackroyd

They momentarily disturb the equilibrium and cause anyone who has been adopted to ponder on who they are and where they came from. That is if they do not already know. And I don’t.

Yes I know where I was born. I know my birth mother’s name (my father’s was left blank) and I know the name she gave me before it was changed to Christa.

But that was all, until fate collided with the day adoption agencies all around the country joined forces to remind us that there are still too many other little Christas out there waiting to find their place in life outside the care system. And it breaks my heart.

Each and every one of them deserves to find all I found, which was unconditional love from two people who were living proof that nurture is every bit as strong and dependable as nature.

As I read about the shockingly large number of children waiting to be adopted and celebrated, the 3,000 others who last year found their new place in life, there was also just a hint of sadness that my wonderful parents are no longer here to say thank you all over again.

Sadness that somehow my arrival on this earth must have been painful for the woman who gave me up. But also a reminder that I was one of the lucky ones. That somehow it was meant to be. Serendipity in action.

It also hurts that I never got to tell my birth mother that it all worked out in the end and that I hope her life did too. She died almost a decade before I found out who she was.

I could have found her sooner. I chose not to while my parents, because that is who they were, were alive. But it might have given her a sense of peace to have received a letter saying I could not have had a better childhood, or indeed a better life. Because that is the truth.

Not every adoption is successful. Not every child comes to understand the sacrifices made by both birth mother and adoptive parents. I hope I do. But that doesn’t mean it is all sunshine and roses. Being adopted can be hard. Adopting a child equally so.

That is why the process is so necessarily complex. There are so many unanswered questions that have to delicately be tackled over and over. And the truth is that sometimes the answers we are seeking are simply not there. It’s odd.

I have told you before I must be among the very few people who can hardly watch Long Lost Family on the television. It has nothing to do with the production values. Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell are the most sensitive of hosts.

Nicky himself was adopted and you can see he feels every story personally. They are all an emotional watch, sometimes simply too much so. There are of course common themes.

Young women forced to give up their babies either because of parental, societal or economic pressures many of whom have never recovered from the emotional trauma they suffered as a result. The guilt they have often lived with has for many been unbearable.

And then there is the child who finds them having spent years with questions they too have lived with all their lives. And so they come to the programme seeking answers.

There are often tears, from both the participants and the audience. But for me it feels too personal.

I certainly cannot watch it as just another programme on the telly, this week’ s Call the Midwife, was a painful reminder of the era I was born in where pregnant women were hidden in mother and baby homes and if like so many they determined or were told to keep their situation a secret the child was removed and sent to an orphanage.

If they were extremely lucky the child would be placed for adoption. That is what happened to me. But why has never truly been answered. They were different times and different circumstances.

Attitudes have changed so much since the ‘50s and ‘60s. Bearing a child out of wedlock is thankfully not only without stigma now but for the first time the number of children born to couples who were not married outnumbered only marginally those who were born within.

And that is for the good. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. In my day 20,000 children a year were adopted. I suppose it was inevitable I would seek to find out more. It is both in my nature and my profession to ask questions, yet I was reluctant to do so, I suppose in case I didn’t like the answers I received.

And then on the eve of the national adoption day and the last night my daughter was in this country before returning to Australia we decided to look at my DNA results in Ancestry.com.

We hadn’t done so since her last visit a year ago. And there she was, a first cousin who had popped up six months before which I had never read.

And so we contacted her asking her about my birth mother. What came back knocked me for six. She said she would contact my birth mother’s two living children to ask more.

And there you have it. I have a brother and sister I had neither known about nor asked about, or a half brother and sister at least.

So how do I feel about it? To be honest I don’t really know. I suppose I am at least curious, not about them but about their mother, our mother, which in turn sounds strange and oddly hurtful to the woman who was and will ever be my mum.

What if they didn’t know I existed? It’s highly likely. What if contacting them betrays a trust in both a woman who may have kept me secret and the woman who raised me.

And yet Pandora’s box has been opened. In truth I don’t even know why I am sharing this with you, possibly because it is cathartic for me and possibly for others who ask the same questions.

But there is something I totally understand, I can sometimes see it on Long Lost Family, having questions answered does not always bring the closure we are seeking.

Being adopted was the best thing to have ever happened to me. And nothing will ever change that.

For those who are even remotely considering doing the same, I can only say it is not an easy decision. And it won’t be easy once you decide it is for you.

But to contemplante the alternative or a life in care for me is unimaginable. Of the care leavers in their late teens early twenties who left the system last year almost a third of them are floundering neither in work nor full time education compared to 13 per cent of other young people.

They are more likely to struggle at school or even end up in prison. And I know why. Everyone of us wants to believe someone cares.

That is all any of us ever truly needs in life. And in being adopted I found the best caring parents anyone could possibly have.

Or rather they found me. At the end of that day matters.