Genealogy Chat

hi everyone have just read all your threads and arent they lovely, i am so pleased for all of you, as for me, well i recieved the letter that my birth mum wrote to the lovely joan and yes all the tears came back, i just cant help it, i to would love to know who i look like, do i look like my birth mum do i have a bit of my dad in me, i hope i havent caused her any unhappy memories with love lorraine xx

jules that is so loverly that you look like your grandad and your little brother I bet you will not sleep much to night and I bet you are so excited I am so happy for you please let us know how you get on tommorow and I wish you every happiness with your birth family lots of love donna x x

hi marjorie I have not spoken to my addopted dad since he said that as he has gone on holiday ,perhaps when he comes back we can have a talk ,I think you are right he probably did say it in temper but i do not want to loose my addopted dad as he bought me up and I love him to bits I have not got any addopted brothers or sisters as my birth mom she married my addopted dad and then he addopted me when i was 3 years old , my mom and addopted dad went on to have my brother . I would love to get to know all about my birth dad and his family and it is nice that i am talking to my birth sister ,aunty and uncle , I am also talking to my cousins by the internet they seem such loverly people . I can understand that my addopted dad will be sad but i do not think anything will change our relationship he still is my dad who bought me up and i have got alot of respect for him and my birth dad has died so really it is my sisters and his family that i am getting to know , i would have loved to met my birth dad but I can not change the past but hopefully I can look forward to the future lots of love donna x x

Hi Donna, Thanks for your lovely reply. I only spoke to Grandad today but am meeting him tomorrow. I can see a resemblance to my little bro and to my Grandad. It still seems a little unreal just yet. Jules xx

Donna I am so sorry to hear that your adoptive dad is taking this so badly. Do you have adopted bros and sis? If so, perhaps you could ask your Dad which one of you he loved less when the next one came in! Anyone who has more than one child knows that love grows - you don't love your first child less just because you have had a second one. And you won't love your adopted parents any less, even if you should come to love your Birth Mother. Perhaps your Dad doesnt realise this and you need to tell him how much you will always love him, no matter what. I am sure that he doesnt REALLY mean he wants nothing more to do with you - that sounds more like anger and fear to me. I hope this works out for you. At the end of the day, I think you have a right to have contact with your birth family and hope that your adoptive parents can be wise enough to stand back and let you do this. Best luck Marjorie

hi jules that is brill news i am so pleased for you , have you met your grandad today or was you talking on the phone ? jules I bet your grandad had loads to say about your dad and I think it is loverly that you have got siblings , do you look like your brother on the picture I bet you are really excited I think that it is loverly that your grandad has said that you are his grandaughter I think that you both will get on really well I think it is really loverly and I wish you every happiness with your birth family lots of love donna x x x

Hi everyone, I have another little update for you. I have found my grandad on my dad's side last night. Quite by fluke really. I found a website for the Grammar school my dad went to. After trawling thru loads of emails posted and not even touching the surface I decided to take a look at the email links page. I was half way down the second column when I saw someone with the same surname as my dad. Thought it was just a coincidence or maybe a cousin etc. So I sent a msg saying I was looking for any rellies or anyone who remembers Phil * who attended said school from the age of 9/10 and left early as he was bored. where he then went to work doing the aeirals and the dj part including his stage names. Well blow me down if I didn't wake up to find a msg saying I had found Phil's dad and a phone number given. Jeez! Back on that ruddy roller coaster again. I asked mum to give me a sign if this is Grandad and if I should phone. And sure enough not 5 mins later I got that same sickly feeling I had on Monday. I had my answer. I didn't ring til 10 as I didn't know if he was an early bird or not. He wasn't in!! I cursed myself on not phoning at 9. I finally got thru to him at half eleven. I was on pins. I explained everything to him and he was wonderful. He has said I'm his grandaughter and that's that. He too now has 13 great grandchildren just like my nan! I am not an only child I have 3 other sibblings. I am the eldest at 31 then there is J (female)at 28, P (female) at 25 and my baby brother A at 19. A is half dutch and still lives in Holland with his mum M. I have seen a picture of him today taken a couple of years ago. He looks so sweet. He'll kill me for saying that!! I am going to see Grandad tomorrow and I can't wait. Talking to him felt so natural, as though I had known him all my life. I was nervous of talking him not because of who I was but because he went to a Grammar school and was very intelligent from what I had been told! He has an IQ of 150 and my dad was in the 180's. But honestly I had nothing to worry about. We just hit it off. Same sense of humour and I take after him for doing sports as a kid. No one else in the family on either side were sporty at all. They watched it and that's about it! Every cloud has a silver lining. Stay strong and stay positive. Luv Jules xx

hi lou that is brill news about your birth family I am so pleased that everything as worked out for you , it looks like this is going to be a new beginning for you I bet you can not wait for your birth mom to ring you again it is good that your birth brothers know about you as it will not be to much of a shock ,I wonder if you look like your mom and your brothers please keep us all updated to how you are getting on with your birth family and i wish you all the happiness in the world lots of love donna x x

Yes Jules, I've heard about your uncanny knack of nodding off mid chat! Well I rang BM's friend yesterday, just to check that everything was ok after our conversation on Thursday night, and she said that BM was in fine form. She said that in fact, she seems happier than she has been in a very long time. She said that BM has struggled to be happy for years now with all that has gone on in her life and she thinks that me making contact and her finally having the opportunity to explain why she did what she did AND to have the reassurance from me that she did nothing wrong and that the people who adopted me loved me and cared for me every bit as much as she would have done had she been able to keep with me with her will be the start of a healing process for her. I don't want to 'crowd' her so I'm going to leave it until mid week and then give her a quick call just to check she is ok with her friend being away, although she may well have called me before then, as apparantly she was planning to get in touch with the boys over the Easter weekend to tell them that we'd spoken and her friend said depending on whether they want to talk to me or want to think about it for a while, she may be in contact to ask if its ok to pass my phone number on to them Lou

Hi guys, Just looked at the latest since I last posted and there has been good/bad and some guilt going on. This is very much how life is but as part of the adoption triad it seems even more so than most. Glad to see there is still hope among us and even though there have tears, don't dwell too much as the pain and grief you are feeling will slowly ebb away. You have found kindred spirits in us all and we share in everyone's grief and happiness all the same. Everyone's journey is important as is the outcome. Everything happens in it's time. If you haven't had the outcome you would like to hope for don't totally give up. Maybe the timing wasn't right just yet. People can change their minds and that rule doesn't just apply to women you know! Some people sometimes need xtra space and time and even a gentle kick up the backside from them upstairs sometimes before they realise they should their mistake. And it is just that. THEIR mistke. You haven't done anything wrong. I used to think that just being born was my fault. It wasn't. Take time to be with your nearest and dearest. It will soothe your soul greatly. They still love you. You're still the same person. Stay strong. love to all Jules xx

hi lou it was really hard telling them but i wanted to be honest to them i wish i had not said anything now and seen how things went with my birth family . lou it was good that you had jess there with you well by emailing her she seems to be really nice to wait up with you as well you know what they say you can pick your friends but not your family , i am really glad that you spoke to your mom i bet it was loverly i wonder if you look alike or have the same things in common , i am really excited for you i bet it is going to be a loverly meeting you are taking your husband or a friend with you? my birth family want to meet my children but i am unsure about that i think it might be best to see how things go ,i just wish that my birth dad was alive so that i could have met him i have heard so many loverly storys about him but i am also sad that if i do continue contact with my birth family i will loose my addopted dad . anyway good luck lou i really am glad for you ,you have been waiting for so long lots of love donna x x x

Hi Donna That must be hard. I haven't decided yet whether to tell my adoptive parents that I've found my birth mother. At the moment its a need to know basis and they don't need to know! No point in upsetting them if this is going to come to nothing other than a couple of phone calls. Last night was quite funny though. As soon as she rang I emailed Jess and said 'she's on the phone'. So I'm having this conversation and emailing Jess saying 'Yep, I'm ok', 'Going well', 'Everything's great'. It was so good to have Jess at the end of the email while I was having this chat. Hubbie was at work so I had no-one to even tell it all to once I came off the phone so came to the boards and posted. Think Jess went to bed then...she'd been waiting to go for an hour but wouldn't leave me, bless her! Lou

hi lou i have just been reading the thread and i am so happy for you i bet you can not wait to see your bm mum it is so nice that she has thought of you for all them years and that your brothers know of you is really good ,i bet it will be a loverly reunion you will have so much to catch up on . jess have a loverly easter holiday any luck with your brother? i do hope that he will ring you soon rainy girl lorraine : i am so sorry what has happened to you , you must feel gutted having to wait all them years and then that happening to you if you want to talk please just email me my aunty she rang me this morning and wants to meet me again next week i said that i would but it would have to be with my husband there , i had a letter pushed through my door off my cousin debbie who is my auntys daughter and she wants to make contact , my mom is pleased for me but my addopted dad is upset and says if i stay in touch with my birth family then he does not want anything to do with me ,i do not know what to do for the best as i do not want to loose my addopted dad but i do want to know about my birth family ,my sister she rang me again last night we have got so much in common and are going to see each other again but my other two sisters do not want to know my sister said to give them time they might come round oh well i had better go for now but please everyone keep your chins up lots of love donna x x

thanx jess i will, i hope you have a lovely easter with love lorraine xx

stay with us Lorraine - your one of the 'Club' we are always here (even if i am personally going away for easter now Lol) Jess x

hello everyone yes its me again, so pleased to see that everything is going well for all of you, i shall pop in from time to time, but i cant express how i feel at the moment, i know it is a hard decision for birth mothers to give their child for adoption, some dont want to and try to fight the family decision, some just have to go with what the family wants them to do. I have to be honest, i do feel totaly rejected and i am sorry to keep on about it but i have to let it out somewhere, my hubby was totaly gutted for me, even he had tears bless him. i know i am not the only adoptee to have been rejected in the world, but that is how it feels at the moment, its like when you split up from your very first boyfriend isnt it, you think the whole world has stopped. I did have it in the back of my mind that she may not want to know, and i kept saying this could happen lorraine, but wow when it does its a real shock. I shall now wait to see what my file says and go from there, you never know someone else in the family might want to know about me, as joan has said to me it is possible that i have never been mentioned and they dont know about me. sorry to be rambling on a bit, hope you all dont mind if i keep looking in to see how you are all doing and if anyone needs to talk please feel free to email me and i will be there for everyone who needs support, yes i am still hurting but in time it will get better i hope. with love to you all lorraine xxx

Another one here with tears in my eyes...... Thanks for sharing all this Lou & everyone one else. My friend Shirley posted her letter yesterday, to her (hopefully...) birth sister. I popped in to see her, she wanted my opinion on the letter, I altered a couple of rather loooooong sentences LOL! She was never one for full-stops! Apart from that though I thought that it needed to be her words, just as she talks, so I kept my opinions to myself. It's half a page of A4, she didn't want to say too much in case the sister doesn't want contact. I know my friend is pinning a heck of a lot on this letter. She's been looking for 2 elder birth sisters, very quietly, for over 20yrs. This letter could potentially open lots of doors for her, and I've got everything crossed :) Birth parents, if still alive would be late 70's/80's so Shirley has concentrated on the sisters she's always known she had. It was an unusual letter to write, as birth siblings wouldn't necessarily know of an adoptees exsistance, but in the very early years of Shirleys life her BM visited twice, both times with the elder sibling (the one she's written to) but was she actually told Shirley was her sister? We'll soon find out! Lots of love & thanks to Joan.... as ever. We need to clone her, hark at her up there apologising for not being in 2 places at once...Bless her! You do a wonderful job Joan, and we are really looking forward to meeting you.

Good morning all! Well, I've now had time to digest everything that happened last night and when hubbie crawled in at 5.15am (he manages a bar, I'd have killed him if he'd been out on the p**s till that time!), all his hopes of just crawling into bed went out the window cos I insisted on giving him a detailed account (probably repeated at least 3 times!) of everything that was said! What amazed me during the phone call is how blatantly HONEST BM was about everything...my adoption, her problems etc. I'd always wondered if the time came that we did speak, would I be able to believe anything that she said anyway but she didn't attempt to make excuses. She said that she had already had one child out of wedlock, parents deeply p****d off but she WAS engaged at the time and fiance buggered off so they agreed to help her raise the baby. When I came along, they insisted that I had to be adopted. She said that she dug her heels in at first and said no but then she had to be realistic. Where would she have gone with a toddler and a newborn baby with no money and no support? At least by giving me up for adoption, she knew that I was getting a better start than she could give me at that time and it secured her son's future as that enabled them to remain with her mother. She got married the year after I was born and she said she did consider trying to get me back but knew that would not be fair. I would have been settled with my family and then she discovered she was pregnant with her youngest child so decided it would be better just to sign the final papers and draw a line underneath it. The other thing she said was that for years people have said to her 'One day, Tina WILL come looking for you' but she said she never dared to hope that would happen. As I said on the earlier posting, she has had a lot of problems over recent years (my youngest half brother has caused her no end of grief and as a result she had a breakdown) so I'm going to call her friend later this morning just to make sure that BM is ok after the phone call last night and that it hasn't freaked her out at all. And we shall take each day as it comes. I('m not one for 'waiting for the phone to ring' anyway and we have each other's mobile numbers so we can just text to say HI if we don't actually feel like talking but just want to make that connection. So thanks to Joan for everything and thank you also to Jess and Liz, both of whom have held my hand over the last few weeks/months, and to Marjorie who has been my impartial sounding board and who was in tears last night when I messaged her to say that we had spoken. Love ya all! Lou xx

Hello Everyone Well ive decided to add my big pennys worth lol. I have sat everyday reading each and every message posted and following your searches. I often get very moved and choked up... I wish you all hope and success with your searches. Me im not even an adoptee but my husband is, and when we started his search it was me who did it for him. I took on all the emotion, stress and sleepless nights for him typical !!! The ride was massive like a rollercoaster up and down all the time. Unfortunately for us his b/mum has died young from a brain heamorage and his father was spanish so we have no hope of getting intouch. But out of it he found 2 lovely sisters. The people who kept me going where joan allan and debbie, if it wasnt for them even i would of quit, so joan you never fail!! you are a human with more emotion that most. Even after all theese years we never forget you and still often look at the pics we took of you when you came to our home town. Friends come and go but precious people always stay in the heart where you will always remain in ours. Im now going through all the grief again with my sister in law helping her to solve her adopted family. I send all my love to you all and hope you all find peace and happiness one day. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

hi lou i am so VERY VERY pleased for you that things are going so well for you, who knows maybe things for me will take a turn for the better (this could be wishful thinking on my part) i am genuinley pleased for you, and my thoughts are with you. joan is a wonderful lady and she cares so very deeply for everyone she helps, mine hasnt worked out for me, but who knows maybe my birth mum will have a change of heart. joan you have never failed in your duty, and you never let anyone down a magic wand would be great maybe later eh. thank you for being the wonderful person you are with love lorraine xxx