This month's PAC-UK guest blog is from a service user, who with support from PAC-UK, made contact with their biological father. A huge thank you from all at PAC-UK to to our guest blogger for sharing their story and experience.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to meet or know about my biological father. From a young age, I was given no information other than his first name and essentially told that he didn’t want to be involved with me. Throughout my whole life, every so often thoughts of who he is, what he’s doing and does he think of me came into my mind.
Everyone around me knew the man I refer to as my Dad wasn’t my biological father. My Mum had met him when I was about 3 years old, we didn’t call him Dad at first, I think because my Mum worried in case it didn’t work out.
Eventually, as things progressed in their relationship, we started to call him Dad. I will always be so grateful to have in my life and have never felt like I’ve missed out on a father role. Yet not knowing what made up part of my genetic make up still pondered me. As far as everyone was concerned, my Dad was my Dad whether that was biological or not.
My parents decided when I was about 10 years old that was my Dad would like to make it official and legally adopt me. He didn’t need a piece of paper nor did I but this was just in case anything happened to my Mum. As part of the adoption process, my biological father had to be contacted. I don’t know too much about the ins or outs as I was a child.
I remember my Mum asking me if I would like to meet my biological father. As a child, this was something I always wanted and said yes in a heart beat. Watching films like The Parent Trap and reading Tracey Beaker I had envisioned that reuniting with my biological father would be perfect we’d instantly get on and it’d be like we were never apart.
However, my Mum started to say things like “what if he has other kids? What if he has a wife or girlfriend who doesn’t like you” etc. At that point the bubble was burst and from then on, I was very reluctant to bring it up again.
2 years ago, I was having a chat with my sister who also has a different biological father but has never expressed any interest in contacting him as she already knew bits of information about him. I’d told my sister I would one day love to find out information about my biological father but didn’t see it happening any time soon. My sister discussed this with my parents, my parents said they would support me with whatever I wanted to do.
Knowing where to begin was really hard, I contacted the court where I was adopted, I contacted the local council, contacted an agency, finally somehow managed to get put through to PAC-UK.
The support myself and my family have received from PAC-UK during this process has been amazing. I have managed to find out bits and pieces about my biological father and even received correspondence from him with PAC-UK contacting him on my behalf. I feel respected, I feel like I can say how I really feel throughout all this without being judged and really feel as though I’m being listened to.
The current pandemic has made things a lot harder but the support hasn’t stopped. My advice to people who have been in a similar situation would be to go for it. I didn’t want to get to 50 years old, to start investigating into this and it be too late.
Even if you don’t feel supported by those around you, PAC-UK will definitely be there. I hope this does help someone in any way. Good luck and I wish you well on your journey.
Anon | September 2020
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Please note, all content published on this page is provided by our guest blogger/s, based on their real-life experiences. We invite you to discuss this blog via PAC-UK's Twitter profile and ask you to tag @PACUKadoption in to your posts and use the hashtag #PacukBlog
This blog is the twentieth of our monthly 'guest blogger' platform which we started in 2019. We would love to hear from adoptees, birth parents (and relatives), adoptive parents/carers, special guardians and professionals who are interested in taking part in future blogs. If this interests you please email leon@pac-uk.org.
