Sandra Field of Barnstaple, North Devon tells the story of her adoption to our sister site Toowrite

Picture Of "I"
by Sandra Field

"You're a lucky girl you know."

I lost count of how many times I heard that phrase, from grandparents and aunts and friends of my parents.

And, each time I heard it, my shame deepened a little more and my confusion grew like a tangled ball of string into an impossible knot of despair.

The story of how, from all the children in the orphanage, my parents had chosen me was recounted many times.

When my father told this story he told it in a kindly and loving way, explaining how he had chosen me from all the other babies, because he knew I was special.

But my mother, my aunts and my grandparents, well, they made their meaning crystal clear: "I was lucky to have been chosen and should be grateful."

I was adopted when I was 18 months old.

My natural mother had died after my birth, and my father, feeling unable to cope with a new baby, had placed me in a children's home.

My memories of my time in that place are related to feelings and the images that they create.

I see a seemingly infinite, white space; an empty echoing enormity of space, within which I existed, small, alone and very scared.

There were no mother arms to hold me, no haven, no place to be loved, and no place to love.

Brisk efficiency was the order of the day, no time to spoil children with hugs and unnecessary attention, "routines are what babies need", (I think they meant nurses!).

As I grew older and tried to make sense of my world, I came to the conclusion that I had been treated this way because I was the child who had killed her mother.

I was inherently bad.

I know now that in fact my mother died from cancer when I was four weeks old.

My adoptive mother, whom I loved, could not love me.

Two years previous to my adoption, tragically, her nine-year-old daughter had died as a result of meningitis.

My mother's grief was unimaginable.

Only a mother who has suffered the loss of a child would truly understand the enormity of her pain.

But my mother saw a way to ease that pain; she would have another child.

Grief, stress and depression; all can have a detrimental effect on conception, and my mother failed to conceive.

Desperate for another child, she adopted me.

But how could she love the child who was meant to ease her pain and instead created endless work, demanded her time and tried her patience?

I was a child hungry for love and attention, and hungry to experience her new and different world, a world of endless possibilities and adventures.

How could my new mother manage such a thing when she felt so broken, raw and tired?

Instead anger grew within her, unreasoned anger, unfair anger, but anger nevertheless.

I made sense of it, this anger, and then I owned it.

Of course, my mother was angry because I was ugly, worthless, ungrateful, and a murderer.

Worst of all, in my mother's eyes, I had dared to attempt to take the place of her dead daughter.

"She was like an angel, so beautiful, so clever, so well behaved, not like you. How dare you!"

It is the small things, spoken to a child, things that to an adult may seem amusing or trivial things, things of little consequence.

But they enter the mind of a child like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces gradually locking into place, each new piece creating "the picture", the picture of "I".

My experience in the orphanage and the conclusions I had drawn from that experience, my new angry mother and all those small spoken things, these created "my picture" and I saw that "I" was bad.

Inside I felt only shame.

From that time on, I only sought out jigsaw pieces that felt right for that picture. Friendship, kindness, affection, no, these pieces did not belong, they could not possibly fit, and sadly I rejected them.

I think I have been scared for most of my life. My mother and relatives would threaten me when I misbehaved. "You will be sent back to the children's home if you don't behave." Back into infinite space.

As I grew older I came to realise that this was an empty threat, but the cruelty, and their implied regret of my existence, was hard to bear.

To keep "I" safe, or as safe as seemed possible, I put her away in a dark safe place, deep down within.

I think I have been sad for most of my life.

The past 14 years have been the most difficult. Before then, although I had dark and difficult times, I had coped fairly well with my fear and my depression.

Then something happened 14 years ago that tore open the defences that I had built up over the years.

I discovered I had a brother!

By now both my adoptive parents were dead and I went about applying for my original birth certificate.

I believed, truly believed, that I was emotionally prepared for wherever this new journey would take me and whatever it might bring.

My original birth certificate showed the full names of my natural parents, my mother's maiden name, their occupations, and their address at the time of my birth.

A kind lady from the social services gave me a telephone number to contact the department where an archived record of my adoption was held.

From that record I discovered I was fed on National Dried Milk, that I had a brother who was two years older than me and the fact that we had both been placed in that orphanage after the death of my mother.

My father had remarried about three years later and my brother, who had not been adopted and was still living in the orphanage, was taken back to live with my father and his new wife.

I sat on all this information for two years.

Today, I cannot remember exactly how I found my brother; I remember lots of telephone calls.

Eventually I discovered his address and wrote to him, a short but thoughtful letter, introducing myself to him (I did not know if he knew of my existence), and offering him the opportunity to contact me if he so wished, I would understand if he did not want contact.

Several days later he telephoned me to say how pleased he was to hear from me.

He told me that my natural father had passed away a year earlier.

But my brother wanted to meet me!

Now that I had found my brother I need never again fear being alone in that infinite void, he was with me and he was part of me; I was re-created. I ceased fearing exposure of "I" and set her free into the world to be loved and to love.

How overjoyed I felt; words are inadequate to describe such joy.

My brother had been affected by his early years, the death of his mother, the four years he spent in the orphanage and then suddenly a new home with a father he barely remembered and a strange woman.

In truth, he was unable to identify with me as a sister; something inside him seemed to have died.

What he really wanted was a comfortable home and for me to become his mother substitute; he found living alone difficult and he was unhappy.

So he pretended to care for me, feigned joy at our finding each other and lied his way into my home for what he hoped would be a long, comfortable and easy life.

My brother could not love me; he did not love me.

I hid from this unbearable truth, but hiding was only an illusion and truth surreptitiously found its way.

I became more and more depressed and emotionally distraught.

Six months after meeting my brother I was admitted to a psychiatric ward suffering from a severe depressive illness.

I was given medication, ECT, (but not love). I returned home.

Those following months were hard as I alternated between being an adult, mother and carer and being a broken desolate child.

A year later I was readmitted to hospital.

Back and forth I went, hospital to home, home to hospital, one moment an adult in control, the next moment that desperate child.

A battle was raging inside me.

I could not, or would not, send that child back into hiding; I wanted to heal her.

I am still trying today because, as yet, I have not found the way.

Please, if you are considering adopting a child, please search your soul until you are absolutely sure that you have within you the capacity to love that child unconditionally.

Because that child will grow up knowing that they are good and worthy and lovable.

They will know that "I" am okay.