Please Listen to me...

And So the Circle Was Joined

Submitted by Tinka, South Africa

I want to share my experience with all of you...I have spent years wanting to search for my bparents, but was never quite sure where to start....how to go it all....and only found out (eventually) about having to contact the Registrar of Adoptions in Pretoria (Mrs Weideman). She traced my bmother (I had names etc, already), contacted her and gave her my telephone number......within 1 minute I had THE phone call I dreamed of all my life.....I was actually talking to my bmother!
I grew up an only child - very lonely life that - and spent a lot of time (once I knew I was adopted) crying and yearning for my bmother! My adoptive parents were good to me, but the light of my life - my adoptive dad - died when I was just 9 years old and my mother and I never really got on very well or got very close. She was very much a 'socialite' and quite old when I arrived on the scene and I spent a lot of my time in the care of 'nannies' (what wonderful folk they were too) and with friends. Growing up I always felt DIFFERENT....I did not ACTUALLY 'belong' really and some of my cousins (to this day) STILL leave me feeling that way. I would be told I was "not really family" but I was also often my own worst enemy in many ways and made life much harder than it need have been by reacting to these comments!
Most of the friendships I formed were with other adoptees - often without being aware of it until it came into the discussions. Other adoptees seemed to feel very much the way I did (which was a relief - I WAS actually normal!).
Then, I suddenly decided to get on with life finding my bparents took a back seat for a while. I had a most horrifying experience - I was followed by a girl who was convinced that I was the long lost child of a friend of hers. Long story........a lot of trauma..........a lot of 'investigating'....and thank heavens they eventually left me alone. For some reason, I KNEW that this was NOT my family (and years later I was proved right!).
I was born and brought up in SA, but moved up to Rhodesia when I was about 19 or 20. I met my husband up there, married and had my family and we eventually ended up immigrating to SA about 17 years ago. When we decided nearly five years ago now that it was time to pack up once again and head overseas, I knew that it was NOW OR NEVER and I just HAD to trace my family before I left my beloved African continent forever! It was at this point, that along with our immigration papers, I wrote a letter to Mrs Weideman!
At the age of 45 to suddenly find another mother, was AMAZING! The experience literally blew me away. My bmother and I met in a coffee shop and it was the most surreal experience of my life. I had put together a small photograph album of 'this is your life' photographs from my first picture with my bparents, right through all the major events of my life, and ending with photographs of my husband, my children and my grandchildren. This I presented to my bmother as a way of "bridging the gap". She in turn presented me with photographs of my half-siblings and told me the story of "before and up to the adoption".....and so, the circle was joined.
My bmother, being quite elderly, is STILL ashamed and although having told the man she married about my birth, she has not told him that I have traced her. She quite happily gave me her address and I write to her sometimes........but her replies are few and far between. She does not want me to meet my half-siblings (which is now my NEW dream) as she feels if she tells them about me at all it will lessen her in their eyes! Oh how wrong you are! But I will keep on praying that one day I will get to meet my whole family and I will continue to try and trace my bfather too!
We are all in this together....don't ever give up....
Tinka