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“I was two when the woman I called Mummy told me, ‘You came out
of another mummy’s tummy.’ I grew up thinking that my birth
mother didn’t want me. I assumed there must’ve been something
inherently wrong with me – why else would a mother give up her
baby?” In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was
given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just
eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and
renamed her Elizabeth. Although brought up in a
‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma
of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz.
She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she
come back for me? Why did she abandon me? But whenever Liz voiced
such questions, she invariably received the same response: “Your
birth parents were not married. They couldn’t look after you.”
Years later, aged twenty-eight, Liz reconnected with her birth
mother – and finally learned the shocking truth surrounding her
adoption. Yvonne had not abandoned her daughter. A social worker
had snatched her ten-day-old baby from her arms. “I didn’t even
get a final cuddle. She just took her away from me,” says
Yvonne. Liz became one of 185,000 victims of forced adoption
between 1949 and 1976 in England and Wales. As a young unmarried
mum, Yvonne was deemed unfit as a parent by the government,
churches, adoption agencies and her father – and made to give up
her child against her will. Although reunited, Liz and
Yvonne are still struggling to cope with the agony resulting from
their devastating separation. As Liz says, “We can’t just skip
hand in hand into the sunset. The trauma of being a forced adoptee
is lifelong.”
'Interesting. Fascinating. I wanted to hold Michelle's hand
and say “We can do this"' - Louise Allen In 1972, Michelle
Pearson gave up her son for adoption. As ‘one of those girls’,
she was expected to hide her shame with secrecy. No one should ever
find out she’d had a child. But she never forgot the son who was
taken from her. In the years that followed she struggled with PTSD,
traumatic memory loss, agoraphobia and anxiety – impacting every
area of her life. This is Michelle’s story of love, loss and
hope; of how over 50 years she has managed the consequences of
living with her secret, survived the emotional pain, and finally,
after being reunited with her son, the journey to rebuild their
lives together.
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