“Remember forgiveness is key to healing. Without forgiveness in your life, life in general will be really hard and miserable…”

“It’s been up to me as an adult to try and work everything out when it comes down to how I feel and felt about certain situations when it is a difficult task. It wasn’t until I was twenty-three that I was starting to get to the root of my problems when beforehand I was not ready to face my troubles…”

"Personally, for me one of the hardest things an adoptee we will ever have to do is to grieve the loss of a person who is still alive…”

Moving on to my two youngest siblings, my brothers. Still to this day, I have not met them and this particularly breaks my heart. Even though, my eldest brother having turned nineteen in November and my youngest brother turning seventeen soon on the day of epiphany (La Fête des Rois or La Befana) there is no sign of moving in the direction of reunion at this moment in time. I hold onto hope every day that sometime soon I will meet them otherwise it’s just too painful.

There are times when I see siblings quarrel or argue and I say to myself, you are so lucky to have a sibling in your life compared to others out there like me for instance who is waiting to be a sister due to not having the chance and opportunity to have contact. I say to these people, don’t take what you have for granted because what you have is all that someone else wishes for.

I went from living with a sibling for the first four years of my life to one day being spit up to then seeing that sibling for one year for contact to then never seeing her again as a child. At the time, I found this very confusing realising that my sister was not coming back.

For me asking for help is something that is hard. I remember as a young child I struggled with this too but also trusting other person is hard because a lot of the time I’ve been let down…

Due to my difficult start in life, it made me difficult to trust others so to protect myself I would create a wall for myself. Once you are in that frame of mind and way of thinking it’s difficult to change your ideas to positive thoughts when all you’ve known is people hurting you in one way or another…

“Essentially from the moment I entered foster care and later adoption, I was a blank and mystery person because I was starting a new life and there was no one around who could tell me about my family history.”

Growing up, my birthday was an occasion in my life that was filled with joy and happiness. I had many birthday parties with my friends and classmates whilst in primary school full of balloons, wonderful food and presents and my birthday was something that I believe I looked forward to as most children do but always at the back of my mind there was always that something there which was on my mind regardless of a wonderful time I had…

“Growing up I always used to question am I the way that I am due to my birth parents (nature) or because of my parents raising me (nurture). I wanted to have something within me that was the same as my biological family because I wanted to connect to my roots instead of nothing at all…”

“…As someone who has been boxed into categories and held so many titles from orphan to adoptee. When can I just be Nina? The Person I allow others to see at my own pace, within my own control. To show as much of me as I want to. To have the choice to be vulnerable or not to be…”

“…For adoptees, it is difficult to find closure compared to other kinds of losses that happen in life but with ambiguous loss, it is near impossible to have closure when the loss is never ending…”

“My name is Danielle and I am a UK domestic adoptee having been brought up in London… This led me in writing three blogs for the agency for adoption and permanency support (PAC UK) in January and June 2020… “

Hello, my name is Nina Johnson. I was born in Bolshaya Vruda, Leningradskaya Oblast,’ Russia. I spent the first 6 months of my life in a hospital. I was born prematurely, due to an unsuccessful abortion. I was born a twin, but she unfortunately died as a result of the abortion.