WEBVTT

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I've always looked at it as a jigsaw puzzle 
with a piece missing

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and until you get that piece 
you don’t know where...

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you haven’t got a full life, 
you don’t know where you came from.

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I believe I was adopted when  I was two.

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My parents never made any secret 
about the fact that I was adopted

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but I really cottoned on to the fact I was adopted
when I was about eight, nine.

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Adoption was just a word. I didn't know 
what it meant and didn’t really care

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but one I'd started realising what it meant, 
that’s when your curiously kicks in.

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Where am I from?

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My birth mum had four kids to three different men 
and we were all adopted out.

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Me and Lisa, my birth sister, 
were adopted by the same couple.

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Even though I had my adopted parents 
I had a connection with Lisa

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because she knew where I came from, 
I knew where she came from.

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If we ever wanted to talk about it, 
we knew what each other went through.

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My adoptive parents are fantastic, 
they really are.

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In my eyes it takes more than 
blood and DNA to be parents.

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It's being close, it's being loved, 
it's being told off.

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All these things contribute to being a parent.

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I had an argument with them when I was 16 
over the whole adoption issue.

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"You’re not really my parents, 
you can't tell me what to do."

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 I moved out basically.

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No disrespect to my adoptive parents,

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but at that point I thought the 
grass was greener on the other side,

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maybe I'll find that and live happily ever after.

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I started to get more curious 
than I had been previously.

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It was like, who my mum was, who my dad was,

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brothers and sisters, 
even though I knew I had two.

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Where would I have been living 
if I wasn’t adopted?

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I moved out into a homeless hostel, 
for whatever reason I got kicked out.

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I went to another homeless hostel, 
but that was in Middlesbrough.

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I knew I was born in Middlesbrough, so I thought 
maybe, while I'm here I can track her down.

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That’s when I go in touch with Dennis from 
After Adoption and he helped us find her.

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He already knew her because my birth mum 
was already in touch with Social Services.

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The meeting took place within a couple of weeks.

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That had to be the very first question 
when they're meeting: why?

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She was very blameful of other people.

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She blamed social workers, 
blamed anybody bar herself.

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I don’t think she coped or could cope.

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She cried, I didn’t.

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I looked at the ground, 
I couldn’t look her in the eye.

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She wanted to build the bridges and 
in my eyes I just wanted answers,

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whatever she said I don’t think she 
could have made up for 18 years.

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My After Adoption worker was like, 
"Do you want to see her again?"... I said yes.

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I don’t know whether I wanted to, 
but I said yes anyway because I felt I had to.

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That was set up and I saw her again.

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I moved out of the hostel that I'd 
ended up meeting her through.

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I didn’t lose my job but I was losing hours 
and I fell back on the rent.

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I had nowhere to go and I was talking to my 
biological mum and she said come down here.

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She already had my half-sister down there.

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My half-sister had more in common 
with my biological mum

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 because she had lived there longer.

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I felt I had clicked in as okay as I could.

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I went back to see my friends 
and got a text message,

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"Don’t bother coming back."

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"Come back for your stuff", and that's about it.

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I went back the next day and she as all like,

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"Sorry, blah, blah, sorry it hasn’t worked out"...
Whatever.

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The reason why I was more hurt was 
not because I had been kicked out,

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 although that’s a pretty big thing to happen,

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the thing that hurt me the most was that 
in my eyes she had abandoned me a second time.

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I haven’t spoken to her since.

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I moved in with my friends until I found my feet.

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I definitely had more in common 
with my adoptive parents.

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They've brought us up so I've always 
had a connection with them.

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I always will.

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There's bound to be ups and downs, 
everywhere's got them.