1.     On the day you bring me home, make sure there is a photo of you holding me and not just one of me and Dad.  Though Dad looks excellent in that photo rocking his short-shorts and side burns, why were you the one holding the camera?  What were you doing?  Why aren’t you touching me and smothering me in love?  I will need visual reminders of how much you love me.  Pictures of us together will be important touchstones throughout my life.  Make sure there are plenty.

2.     Please acknowledge that I have two mothers and understand that I hold you both in my heart equally because any alternative is impossible.  This will feel hard so it might help to know that my heart is like The Tardis.  There is so much room in there for you both.  In fact there are so many rooms you won’t even need to be in the same one.

3.     Do not ever ask me to choose a mother, either knowingly or inadvertently.  Read Sophie’s Choice if you are unsure what I mean.

4.      In acknowledging our triad, it will help me if you can speak of my other mother to me.  Not being able to talk about her in a normal way is liable to make me internalise my feelings and become secretive.  These seeds will grow and become dangerous as I get older.

5.     Never refer to the time I came to live with you as ‘when we got you’.  Being ‘got’ makes me feel like a pet, not a person.  You get dog’s from the pound not babies.

6.     Please do not tell me that I was ‘special’ for being adopted and the ‘same’ as a biological child.  It seems to me you’re one or the other.  Either way, it is impossible to hold this particular paradox when you are 5 years old. 

7.     Be careful about how you tell the story of your baby who died when you’re talking about my adoption.  Even a 6 year old can work out that she’s a replacement for a dead baby and the feeling is like the blood scene from Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’; viscous and lingering.

8.     You will need to accept that if I had been able to choose when I was 9 years old, I would have chosen Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard as my birth parents over you and that when they came to claim me to join the family singing troupe, I would have had to apologise to you and Dad and go with them.  I hope you understand.  

9.     Appreciate that I want my birth mother and that this need is wholly outside of my control.  I don’t feel it to be mean to you.  This desire is driven by my body yearning for the very atoms that it came from.  It is a homing device stitched into the fabric of my being.  Trying to ignore it means I have to pretend to be someone I am not and that is a slippery slope.

10.  You will need to tell me that my having this need doesn’t hurt your feelings.  Tell me instead, that it’s a completely normal feeling and you totally understand.  If you are hurt by it you need to find an excellent therapist who can help you work through it.  Don’t make your pain my pain.

11.  I will need a soft place to land so often in my life and I need that to be you.  When you think I have flown the nest, I won’t have.  I will probably keep pulling away from you my entire life, but if I know that you are steadfastly there, I will always come back.  I will always need  to come back.

12.  Don’t avert your gaze.  Holding eye contact makes me feel seen.  I will break eye contact my entire life because I am scared if anyone looks too long, they will see that I am unworthy of love.  When I look back to you, if you have looked away, it will confirm to me that I was right but if your gaze is steady and true, I will eventually feel seen and safe.  It’s a bit like the blinking contest we do when we are kids.  You’ll need to master this.  Practice. 

13.  Tell me I am enough.  I will never feel enough and I need you to remind me EVERY.  SINGLE. DAY. That I am enough.  As I am. 

14.  Touch me every single day.  If I resist a hug, then hold my hand.  Sometimes I will resist contact altogether.  When I do, stand close and lean in.  Be close enough that I can breathe you in.  I need you to teach me that I am not repulsive.  I will need to learn what love feels like.

15.  I often won’t know what I want.  So ask me what I need instead.  You have to ask it in a particular way though, so be careful.  Shouting, “WHAT do you NEED?” in an exasperated, hands thrown in the air way, is actually quite unhelpful.  Enquiring gently and quietly, “Honey, what do you need?” will help me learn to articulate the things I need to be OK. 

16.  Accept that I have a primal wound.  I know, right?  It sounds so ugly and impossible to recover from.  I also know that you grew up believing that babies don’t remember anything.  Understand that they do, that our tiny bodies remember being taken away.  If you don’t understand, just suspend your disbelief because you love me.  

17.  Once you’re pretending to accept that I have this wound, think about all the things that might help alleviate it.  Massage, reiki, acupuncture, walks in the woods, sound baths, yoga; I think the list could in fact be endless.  Then start researching and keep telling me about all the things you have found.  Your acknowledgment of my trauma and your commitment to empowering me to heal it will make us magnificent. 

18.  Find a community of adoptees for us.  I will feel so lonely in this world and I will desperately need other people like me.  You will also REALLY need other parents of adoptees, so that when I go bat-shit-crazy-off-the-rails, you’ll have friends in the same adoption boat and you can all freak out and throw life preservers and oars about together.  Safety in numbers.

19.  When I’m a little older, tell me what it was honestly like to not have your own biological child.  I know you tried to have one before you adopted me, so let’s not pretend I was the first choice OK?  Being honest about your loss and grief lets me see you.  When I can truly see you, I can truly trust you.

20.  Read Khalil Gibran’s poem, ‘Your Children” at least once a year.  Maybe more.  Actually, every week.  Remind yourself that I am not yours but a daughter of Life’s longing for itself.  If this feels too esoteric for you, just remember that I am my own person, I am not you, I am not my brother or sister and I am not the replacement for the child you could not have.

21.  This will be a tough one, but accept that I don’t have your DNA and therefore may not be like you.  I may not like the things you like.  Accept that your thing may not be my thing.  Teach and share but don’t indoctrinate.  You’re my guide not a dictator.  

22.  Bake with me.  Standing behind me while I’m balanced on my stool, guiding my chubby little hands as I measure, mix and pour in a warm kitchen that smells of sugar, love and shared wisdom will be bread for my soul, always.  I will never forget how safe and loved I felt, even when I am mad at you and the world.

23.  My physical attributes are the only things I have of the mother I do not know.  They hold so much significance and are talismans that connect me to where I came from.  It will be so important that I am in charge of them.  This means you will need to let me grow my hair.  I know you said it was too thick and unruly and you didn’t have time to manage it, but it’s wonderful, expressive, rich hued northern Italian hair.  I need it to be long so my feelings of being ‘less-than’ are not amplified by also looking like a blind Franciscan monk with Parkinson’s gave me hair-cuts.  

24.  As a wild gesticulator when I talk, please insist that I learn Italian because you know my birth father was from Italy.  It will make more sense to everyone if, when I am madly flapping my hands about in conversation, I am also speaking Italian.

25.  Let my left-handedness be.  I know you corrected it to right-handedness out of kindness, thinking it would be easier when I was older, but it takes away one of the very few things that identified me as me.  Hereditability of left handedness is roughly 24%, not much, but I’ll take whatever I can get that keeps me connected to my life before adoption.  My son, your grandson is left handed.  Believing this is a genetic trait fills me with joy.

26.  I will find it hard to trust women, having been abandoned by the most important one.  You will need to keep my confidences and be the first and best example of what women can mean to each other.  If you don’t do this, I will struggle to form nourishing and meaningful relationships with wonderful women my entire life and form unhealthy relationships with men instead.

27.  Explain to me that people will let me down and that I will let people down and that whenever either happens, it will feel like the sky is falling.  When I am let down, I will feel unworthy and when I let someone down I fear they will abandon me.  Whichever side the coin lands, I will end up alone and ashamed.  I need you to teach me that being let down and letting people down is inevitable for everyone and that I can and will survive both.

 28.  Teach me how to stay because I will run.  It will be my life’s work to feel truly safe and wholly loved and in some crazy, counter-intuitive way, I will run whenever I feel either of these things is possible.  Help me learn to stay the course.  Hold my hand.

29.  Show me how to breathe.  I will hold my anguish silently in my body throughout my life and whenever I feel unsafe or unloved, I will forget how to exhale.  Help me master my breath so that I can learn to breathe through the pain.

30.  Read everything you can about adoption.  It’s worth noting that you will need to do this for the rest of your life.  It’s a bit like the ‘A Dog is Not Just for Christmas’ bumper sticker.  Adoption doesn’t end when you get the new birth certificate I’m afraid.  It’s a lifelong journey and the information changes all the time.  Stay current. 

When you stay current, you can stay in conversation with me and when you stay in conversation….

…we stay connected. x