A recent comment from Kerri, aged 16 years, prompted me to raise two issues about adoption: firstly, the courage it takes to actually speak about thoughts and feelings related to adoption; and secondly, knowing where to find support from people who understand these issues.

Let me address the latter issue first. Kerri was surfing the net during school time, found one of my blogs on the difficulty of contacting birth parents, and had time to write just a few lines about her own adoption experience. What came through was her frustration in not being able to find places where she could share her thoughts and feelings with people in the same situation. She is only 16, has been contacted by and met her biological grandparents, but her birth mother is absent from the scene because she has schizophrenia. Dealing with all the emotions that come with meeting birth families is hard enough for anyone, let alone for someone as young as Kerri. And on top of that, she has to cope with having a birth mother who isn’t well.

It takes me back to the chapter in my book, ‘Beyond the Red Door’, where I tried to paint a picture of the incredible array of feelings I experienced when I met my birth mother – who made it clear she wanted no further contact – and then was contacted by my biological grandparents who were desperate to meet me. To someone who is not adopted, being accepted by your natural family shouldn’t cause any problems. But there is so much at stake. There is confusion about why one part of the family wants you while the other doesn’t, excitement at being accepted, disbelief that it will last, fear that your adoptive parents might feel rejected, and fear of being rejected because of course, it can’t be true.

If you don’t know where to go with all these feelings, who to talk to, you can feel very cut off from the world around you. There are support services out there, counselors and social workers who specialise in the field of adoption. Sometimes it may not be about how to find them as much as taking that step to trust another person with your deepest thoughts and fears.

Why is it so hard? Because you feel different. You feel as though you shouldn’t have the sort of feelings you do, that you shouldn’t want to know your natural family, know more about your background. You might feel disloyal and ungrateful to your adoptive parents. And if your adoptive parents have put up a barrier to you expressing your thoughts on adoption, it becomes even harder to talk about how you feel.

when you do find the right counselor or support group, the relief is enormous. That’s when you discover there is nothing wrong with how you are feeling, that it is perfectly natural.

I remember the day I finally got the courage to see an adoption counsellor because I could no longer handle being bombarded with images of my birth father in the media. At that stage, I hadn’t searched for him. I wanted the counsellor to give me some technique to stop the feelings I was having. I nearly fell off my chair when she said, “It’s perfectly natural for you to feel this way. Why don’t you consider contacting him?”. So I wasn’t some half crazed loser after all!

In thinking about where to find support, I’ve just stumbled across a new website that specialises in international and transracial adoptions for all sides of the adoption triangle. It looks pretty comprehensive and is promoting a documentary that is being made about the issues in transracial adoption. The film will follow American adoptive parents who go to China to meet their new daughter, and an adult Korean adoptee living with white parents whose adoptive mother is diagnosed with a brain tumour, which brings up new issues of abandonment. The film will also incorporate comments from professional counsellors and social workers on the issues brought up by all parties concerned.

You can view the site at Adopted, The Movie They are wanting more input from adoptees, have a blog and film clips to view.

Kerri’s comments have reminded me just how isolated adoptees can feel, especially during the teenage years when so many questions surface about who we are. I hope she finds someone to support her.

I just re-read my blog about Chapter 8 of ‘Beyond the Red Door’, and thought it might be useful to write about how hard it is to take the first step and contact a birth parent. More importantly, people outside of adoption may not understand why it is so difficult. And I invite your comments as well. This is just off the top of my head.

It takes a lot of courage to make that decision, the decision to search. What makes it a hard choice initially is society’s inherent attitude towards adoptees, that they should be grateful for being adopted. How could they possibly want more than what they had – loving parents who chose to take them on?

It’s not something I was ever openly told over and over, but it cropped up either as a direct comment, or as an implied one. It was enough to stop me from expressing my real feelings to my adoptive parents, even though they were not the instigators of these comments. I was lucky, then, that they were the ones to bring up the notion to find my roots when I turned eighteen.

But even with their blessing, their support and my need to discover who I was, reaching out to my birth parents was frightening. What if I was rejected again? Was I really not good enough? And what “right” did I have to “intrude” into their lives?

These words, “right” and “intrude” certainly plagued my life, tripping me up all the way along the search and reunion track. Again, I think the belief that I didn’t have the right to contact my natural family, that I mustn’t intrude and cause them any hurt, came from covert and overt messages all around me. It makes building and maintaining relationships in adoption very difficult.

I suppose it didn’t help that in both initial meetings with my birth parents, I got the “not interested” and “don’t believe we’re related” messages. If someone had asked me “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” when setting out to make contact, I think I would have given these answers. Not a good way to start a relationship, if given the choice, which I wasn’t by my natural mother.

Another barrier to making contact is the fear of an aggressive response by the natural parent about being “found”. And here I am reminded of the laws that unfairly prevent adoptees from discovering their true identities, that it is somehow the product of a “warped or crazed mind” to want to find our families of origin. Just as I am appalled that Aboriginal people weren’t granted citizenship in Australia until 1967, I shake my head in disbelief at the lack of human rights to people affected by adoption. But spare a thought for sperm donor children whose records don’t even exist, and who encounter the abrupt “no contact” response if they are lucky enough to have identifying information.

The reasons I’ve listed here relate to my experience. There are many more reasons why adoptees find it hard to make that first contact with a natural parent. I’d love to hear your own experiences, and I’m not forgetting the other parties to adoption either. Feel free to make your comments.

I said you’d need tissues for Chapter 7, and you’ll need them for Chapter 8 as well!

Get used to me saying that this was the hardest chapter to write, because I think the further I get into my story, the harder it was to write about things that happened to me.

So in this chapter, I take the big plunge and contact my natural father through a mediation agency. Straightforward? No, quite the opposite. Again with the tangle of emotions that I was carrying, together with a lack of understanding of the complex issues for all parties in the adoption triangle, I stumble into a reunion that just about knocks me out. I’d been blind (excuse the pun) to any signs that my natural father doubted our relationship, so when he threw me this curved ball, I wasn’t ready for it.

Months go by with very little communication, letters that go unanswered, questions hanging. Finally, the DNA tests are done, and our relationship is proven. In all this, my adoptive parents stood by me, as solid as rocks.

Does it get easier then, yu ask? No, it doesn’t. And you’ll have to read the chapter to find out what happens.