Christa Ackroyd: Adoption scandal apologies bring reflection on life I've had and other life I might have known

And it should have happened months ago if the party’s national executive has not blocked his path, with the lame excuse that he was better staying as Mayor of Manchester. No matter, it is done now.

I like Andy Burnham. I have not always voted for his party, sometimes I have, other times I have not. But what we need now is a huge dose of Northern common sense, an end to politics being largely centred on the South and a cross party approach to some of the issues which undoubtedly need to be tackled. Burnham in his coming together with Theresa May to support the fight for justice by the Hillsborough families showed both tenacity and humility. He was booed at the memorial service but listened as to why. And together they got the change, largely through financial support, to ensure their voices were heard. I like that.

So that’s that. I am sure I will revisit the subject again, but for now, I will return to another thorn in the side of politics and that of another great British institution, the church. Adoption.

Last week the Church of England and its admirable new female Archbishop of Canterbury followed in the footsteps of the Catholic Church and formally apologised to those mothers who were forced to give up their babies for adoption. It was uncomfortable viewing.

I was one of those babies. The numbers are significant. In a recently concluded parliamentary inquiry it is estimated that from 1949 until 1973 185,000 babies born in that now outdated phrase “out of wedlock”. Which means that in turn the vast majority of the same number of women who gave birth to those babies were forcibly asked to give them away.

When I say forced this did not mean wrenching the child away from its mother’s breast moments after birth, though we know that did happen. It means that the state and often religious organisations and others colluded with what the report describes as “societal norms” to make it almost impossible for them to stay together. There was no financial or emotional support; in fact quite the reverse. The only way to suffer the shame society heaped upon these women was to send many of them to Mother and Babies homes until the child was born. And present adoption as best for mother and best for baby. And if you don’t believe me adoption rates plummeted when financial support to such instituions was withdrawn and given to the women themselves in the mid 1970s.

And reading that detailed report broke my heart. As you will know my adoption was idyllic. I reflected last weekend on Father’s Day how lucky I had been. But that luck was in some way left to chance. Others I know were not so fortunate.

Growing up I carried the stigma of my adoption like a suit of armour. I didn’t care I told myself and others that my birth father was just a line drawn across a column on my original birth certificate. I told everyone I was illegitimate before people could discover that was the reason I had been adopted. No matter how many times my adopted parents (and they were my parents) turned up at school events I was determined to prove the circumstances of my birth didn’t matter. It did.

As I grew into a somewhat difficult, diffident, teenager I would rail against my birth mother declaring that when I had children I would live in a dustbin rather than give them away to the point that mum sat me down and begged me not to judge the woman who had done so because she had no choice. Unmarried, 19 when she became pregnant, and sent to a Church of England home for unmarried mothers as society dubbed them, I was adopted at ten days old. In the intervening couple of years that followed my brother (adopted not blood) was six weeks old which probably meant I was removed in a instant and the poor woman who gave birth to him was forced to care for him, bond with him still for the same thing to happen, to be told they were better off with someone else.

My parents were wonderful. They made me who I am with love, care and compassion. But they were special people. They recognised the abandonment wounds that still occasionally rise to the surface in me. But more importantly they recognised the sacrifice my birth mother and hundreds of thousands like her were forced to make because society judged them as unfit to care for those they had grown inside of them.

I was 40 when that judgement ended in an instant. My father had died and together mum and I opened my birth certificate to see the name she had given me. Vivienne. Special, musical, and different. Chosen with care. I also saw her name for the first time too.

Several years passed. As the bond between my daughter and I increased with every passing year, I thought about her often. Now only kindly. She had no choice. Perhaps it was still the worst day of her life. Perhaps she lived with such shame she never told anyone but simply picked up the pieces and tried to move on. Did she think of me on my birthday every year? Did she have regrets about being compliant with her family’s wishes, demands even, laid out clearly to my mum and dad by those who arranged the transfer of a human being to another, namely me?

But I will never know. By the time I was ready, my birth mother had passed away in her early fifties. My research which took me decades to even contemplate showed she had married soon afterwards and had two more children. And I am glad. I hope she had a happy life with them.

I had the best life I could ever have imagined. My parents taught me to believe in myself, carve my own path but not to judge along the way. And so the Church of England apology is not necessary for me. But it helps more than I thought it would. If I had written my life it could not have been better. But perhaps it is even more necessary for my birth mum and thousands upon thousands like her who never got over the shame the state and organisations including churches heaped upon them while taking away their choice to decide.

The Parliamentary inquiry has made one major recommendation. It recognises the harm done for 40 years to women and yes to some of their children. It demands not only an apology from the organisations they funded to force these women to give away their children but from the state itself. I understand that will happen very soon. As it should.

That tough outer shell I still wear demands no apology for me, though deep inside I know it has hurt me. Why else would I be crying as I write this?

No I demand that apology to a woman forced to hide away in shame in a home and hand over a baby after hours upon hours of gruelling labour in return for redemption for her so called sins.I am both sad and happy at the same time.

Happy that fate brought me to a couple whom may have remained childless when they had so much to give. Happy that they were the perfect antidote to what may always have been a hard spot in my heart of feeling unloved and unwanted when the truth was possibly, no probably, so very different.

But oh so sad that I never got to say to a woman who as a young girl was forced to make a decision that was usually anything other than choice, that I had the best life, the happiest of times with the best family I could have imagined. But more importantly I hope she did too with the family she made later.

So sorry if I ever judged her. Sorry she was put in that position and sorry for the shame that the state and organisations that were supposed to care colluded to heap upon her. But at least they too have said sorry, or are about to, even though for her and so many others like her it has come too late. Written with love for the life I have had and the other life I might have known.