Finding my birth mother

[Tyre Smoke]

When I began looking for my mother, nobody knew whether she was alive or dead. It was assumed she was still living. As always, I started with my birth certificate. This gave my mother's name and it went from there with the adoption tracing agency. Parallel to this, I had contacted the County Social Services concerned with adoption and they were very helpful. They said they would contact Cornwall Council (where I was born and given up for adoption) and find out if there was anything on file from 1965. Meanwhile the adoption tracing agency found a couple of possibilities for my mother and by a process of elimination discovered a marriage in 1966. We applied for the marriage certificate which gave her father's name (see Berlin Airlift thread) and witnesses. Ultimately we traced her to an address in West Wales. The house is still in her name even though she died in 2016 because my half brothers and sisters have had a major falling out over her estate (she died intestate) and everything is very emotional between them. Obviously I've tried to stay out of that. But that became a dead end until the adoption tracing people located a death record for my mother in Nottingham, which gave the name of one of my sisters who registered the death. But checks revealed that the address she was at when the death was registered was not where she is now. A bit more private detective work and we had her current address. So I sent a "Dear Xxx, I think, no, I know we are related....". From that I got an email, and the rest, as they say, is history.



My sister, myself and my mum back just before lockdown.

[GloverMart]

Thanks for sharing that, TS.

[Last Visit]

TS, thanks for telling your story, and that photo is a great way to tell it. As said before, I'm not adopted and have no knowledge of any adoption in my family but the stories shared here have been enlightening as well as stark in cases but all a fascinating read.