Contact – we’re in the middle
20th September 2023
Blog
Amy* is 18, and was adopted at the age of seven. Amy wanted to pass on some of her thoughts and feelings about her personal experience of adoption contact. Amy’s words via her mum.
- ‘Despite it being explained to me by my social worker, and foster carers, I was confused and extremely upset when contact visits were stopped with my birth mother and grandmother due to me being adopted. It didn’t make sense to me (and still doesn’t).
- Once Letterbox started with my birth family, I felt it was difficult, but the point I’d really like everyone to understand is … that for me (and probably lots of adopted children), I looked forward to hearing from my birth mother and grandmother. From my point of view, it was hurtful and hard to understand why an adult wouldn’t keep up contact. Why would they put their needs first?
- Having used social media to contact family members, I had mixed feelings. Being in contact with wider family and getting to know them has been very positive; however, being in direct contact with my birth mother brought up a lot of difficult feelings for me.
- Contact is very artificial. Most of the time people don’t say what they really want to say. I think children are very vulnerable in the process as their fear of being left or rejected again means they won’t ask for what they need or say what they want to. We’re in the middle, pulled between our new life and old.
- Birth families often struggle to understand that problems might continue once a child is adopted and that our new life hasn’t fixed everything. Several birth family members were surprised when my mum told them I found school hard to manage, or that I had some mental health issues.
- However, on balance, I would rather have contact than no contact. And I feel it is important that the adults understand and support that.
Read how Amy’s mum managed contact during Amy’s childhood and again as a result of social media – We all struggled with adoption contact, written by Jan*, Amy’s mum.
* not Amy or Jan’s real names. Stock photograph used.
