Guest Post - Lessons of My Life by Gaynor Cherieann. Adoptee and Author.

guest post

25 Jul

Gaynor Cherieann describes herself as; “A 60s baby, just hit 60” and I have been lucky enough to get to know her a little through the adoption community on Facebook.

She has been a great source of encouragement and advice for my writing.

In the interests of sharing more than just my thoughts and feelings here, Gaynor has kindly agreed to be the first person to guest write for ‘Who’s Wally?’ I've asked a few more from the adoption community to write also, so fingers crossed that this won't be the only guest appearing here.

Thank you Gaynor, over to you …

'Lessons of my life'

This year I have reached the grand old age of 60 but am still young at heart.

I was of course one of the babies whose mothers were forced to give them up in the 1960s because they were unmarried. I grew up knowing I was adopted but from then on it was a taboo subject. What can I say about my adopters? (I find it hard to say the word parents).

‘The’ mother and ‘the’ father were narcissistic and controlling, but if that's all you know then it takes a while in your life to realise that this was not normal.

Before I had children of my own, I did not feel a great need to search, plus I was made to feel it was an evil thing to do. Life moves on and when I was in a good place in my life at around 30, I did search the old-fashioned way before the internet. When I received my adoption file the biggest revelation was my name change. I was someone else. Why had I not thought of this before?

I didn’t process this properly at the time and rushed ahead and found my whole birth family. My birth parents had married each other, had two more girls, and my full sisters, they later divorced but have stayed the best of friends. We have had a good relationship for almost 30 years, it has of course taken some adjustment, but we have grown to know and love each other. (there’s always one fly in the ointment, one of my birth sisters!) but that is another story.

After years of heartache, I cut out the adopted family from my life, which was the most releasing thing I ever did. I could then move forward and try not to look back too much. I read many books, joined an adoption group which was my lifesaver, and talked to adoptees.

This all helped me understand and heal from adoption trauma (which I didn’t know was a real thing at the time). I have since analysed every part of my adoption journey coming to terms with who I could have been, who I should have been, the life I would have had, and many more emotions along the way.

My conclusion is everything happens for a reason, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and love is all you need - a few song lyrics in those quotes!

My life has been blessed with a wonderful reunion. There are always hiccups, but you get through those. I have found out who I am as a person and embraced it. I’ve got a wonderful family of my own and finished my healing process by writing my memoir last year. Now at 60 years old, I feel complete.

To find out more about Gaynor you can check out her website here.

Gaynor Cherieann’s book, ‘An Adoptee's Journey, Letters of my Life’ is brilliantly written in the form of letters to significant people in her life, you can find it here on Amazon. as well as through her website.