36. Adopted at six by a white family.
Did you always know you were adopted?
“they’d explain how I’d come to them and it was, like, a choice that they’d have me”
Are you pleased you were adopted?
“the whole nature or nurture debate and, you know, would I have been different if I’d… if I’d have grown up in my, sort of, birth family, or even in care. You know, what makes you, who you are.”
Have you decided to look for your birth family?
“And I have real issues with having to write ‘unknown, adopted, unknown adopted’ on every piece.”
What are the unanswered questions you have to deal with when you’re adopted?
“I was told I couldn’t have children, so it was gonna be, o.k. so, not only am I adopted so it’s almost like I’ve got no past, now it’s gonna be that I’ve got no, kind of, link to the future either in that sense”
How have your adoptive parents embraced your heritage?
“And we’re still really, really close now and to me they are my mum and dad. But… I can appreciate that, for some cultures, and certainly some kind of ethnicities, it would be easier to, sort of, be raised within that kind of culture.”
Was your heritage taken in to the account when you were adopted?
“But it was quite apparent to everybody, living in a very small town in Devon, that… I wasn’t, sort of, purely Caucasian, and I did look a bit different”
What has changed in cultural heritage matching?
“I’m just grateful to have been adopted at all, and to have a loving home and a loving family, really. To me, skin colour has always been kind of an envelope that a letter arrives in, and you discard the envelope and just hold on to what’s in the lette”
