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6 tips for telling people you’re adopted
For young adopted people, it’s often difficult to decide when and with whom to share their life story. The Adoptables (peer network of adoptees aged 13-25) wrote this guide for teenage adoptees. Six tips for telling people you’re adopted When we are at Primary school, we tend to be a lot more open with […]
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You owe it to yourself, and your child, to ask for help – an adoptive Dad writes
Like most adopters, I thought we’d be the ones who would overcome any problems with the sword of love and the shield of consistency. Whatever our child’s past, we’d make it all better just by being such great parents. Of course it didn’t turn out that way. Love was often met with anger, boundaries and […]
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Adult adoptee Chris writes to his year 7 self
For an adopted person, the secondary school years can be be a particularly challenging time. First4Adoption’s Chris Burton wrote this letter to his 12 year old self : Dear Chris, There’s so many things I’d like to tell you, me, or whatever we call ourself. Really important stuff I wish we’d known in Year 7. But […]
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I became a father at the age of 53
I became a father at the age of 53. If you’d told me this would happen twenty years, ten years, even five years earlier, I wouldn’t have believed you. Parenthood was something I’d always thought about, but it was never for me. Why? Because, until 2005, gay couples couldn’t adopt. It took a change in […]
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Jesse Toksvig-Stewart celebrates families of all shapes and sizes
I guess you could say that our adoption story is not a typical one. In the beginning it was my two Mums, my siblings and I. We lived together in a great house in Surrey and we had the best up-bringing any children could ask for. One of my Mums changed career about 6 years […]
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The blessings of adopting an older child – a Dad shares his adoption story
It’s quite understandable that most people start by thinking about adopting a baby. Having a baby is the biological norm: adopting is initially about replacing like with like: I can’t have a baby, so I will adopt a baby. It would be quite a leap of the imagination to think, ‘I can’t have a baby so I’ll adopt a […]
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Volunteering at First4Adoption
I have just come off the phone from today’s third potential adopter. As a volunteer for the national information service, First4Adoption, I take calls from a wide range of people considering the tremendous emotional journey that is adoption. Some of them are telling us things they have never shared with even their closest family and […]
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A birth Mother writes…
I gave up my son for adoption in 1967 when practices were very different from today. My son hadn’t been neglected or abused. My only ‘sin’ was to be a 17 year old single mother. There was no support for me and I had no choice in the matter. I grieved for him through all […]