The shocking truth behind MY ADOPTION

For years, Liz Wilde knew very little about her birth mother, until a stranger got in touch

- Liz Wilde

Exactly two years ago, I wrote an article about my mother, Valerie, who had been forced to give me up for adoption in 1963 and the heartbreak she had experienced. I never dreamt it could lead to a new connection to her.

By the time I wrote my article, I had resigned myself to never knowing more than the basic facts about this crucial time in my mother’s life. Yet, one week after publication, a lady called Lyn emailed me from America to say she had been very moved by my article – and that she had been in the same mother-and-baby home at the same time as my mother. Valerie was not alone. At least half a million women lost their children in the same way in the UK during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, due to the stigma of being unmarried mothers.

At the age of six, my adoptive mother sat me on her knee and gently explained how my first mother had been unable to keep me. From that moment on, I secretly dreamt of meeting the woman who had given me life. When I was 18, I began the lengthy and frustrating search, and after many delays and setbacks (this was pre-internet), I traced my natural family 11 years later. I was too late. My mother had died tragically young at 52, of heart failure, only four years earlier.

Deprived of my longed-for reunion, I was naturally greedy for anything my mother’s family could tell me about her life. But when it came to the subject of my adoption, I hit a wall of silence. My grandmother, who had supported the adoption, was understandably reluctant to revisit her decision and would cry whenever I attempted a question.