I got a SISTER for Christmas

After years of searching, Diane Ward had the best gift of all

They say you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family, although for my parents that wasn’t true. They had chosen me and my two siblings, Sally and Daniel. We were all adopted, me when I was just a few weeks old, Sally as a baby, and Daniel as a toddler. None of us were biologically related, but that didn’t matter – not at first, anyway. My mum Martha had desperately wanted children, but after years of trying to conceive and suffering devastating miscarriages, she and my dad Warren decided to adopt.

Mum had always told me the truth – that my birth mother hadn’t been able to look after me and, because she’d loved me so much, she’d found someone else to care for me. As a small child, that was enough. I had an idyllic family life, growing up in rural Pennsylvania, USA, surrounded by love and affection. As I grew, I was too afraid to let myself think about who my birth mother was. I was terrified that she hadn’t ever wanted me at all, and that she probably wouldn’t be interested in me now. Of course, there were times when it would pop into my mind, and I’d wonder who she was, and why I’d been given away, but I didn’t dare explore things any further.