The adoption symbol: a triangle intertwined with a heart. Each point of the triangle represents one part of the adoption triad, the birth family, the adoptive family, and the adoptee, and the heart represents the love that connects all three, whatever shape that connection takes.
You don't have to explain the fog
If you're adopted, you already know there's a particular kind of tired that comes from having to explain adoption to someone before you can even get to what you actually wanted to talk about. I'm not going to make you do that here.
I'm an adoptee too
I've lived this for coming up to sixty years. I found my mother before the internet existed, when searching meant a trip to London for my original birth certificate, phone calls and waiting. I had ten good years of reunion with her before it broke down, in a way I still don't fully understand. I found my father three years too late, and his daughters wanted nothing to do with me.
I'm not telling you this so you'll feel sorry for me. I'm telling you so you know that when you talk to me about the fog, the identity questions, the rejection, the grief that doesn't have a name because nobody died, I'm not nodding along from the outside. I've been inside it.
An honest word about qualifications
There is no formal, required qualification for working with adopted adults in the UK. Some therapists take optional short courses on it, and that's a good thing, but it isn't a recognised specialist credential the way, say, a psychosexual diploma is. So I want to be completely straightforward with you.
I do not hold a specialist qualification in adoption therapy. What I hold instead is a lifetime of lived experience: as an adoptee, as someone who searched, who found, who was reunited, and who was rejected all over again. That understanding runs through everything I do, rather than sitting apart from it as a separate service.
If what you're looking for is a specialist, Ofsted-registered adoption support agency, organisations like PAC-UK offer exactly that, and I'd encourage you to reach out to them too. What I offer is different: a therapist who happens to already understand this world from the inside, working with you on whatever you bring, using the same integrative approach I use with every client.
What this understanding looks like in practice
You won't need to explain what the fog is, why reunion can be euphoric and devastating in the same week, or why a "successful" reunion can still fall apart years later for reasons nobody can quite name. These things can show up in the work in all sorts of ways, including:
- Identity questions that don't resolve neatly, who you are, where you come from, which parts of yourself were shaped by nature, nurture, or neither
- Attachment patterns that trace back further than any relationship you can currently point to.
- The particular grief of rejection after reunion, which often has nowhere to go because so few people understand it
- A lifelong sense of being slightly on the outside, even in families and relationships you love
- Searching, whether you're mid-search, post-search, or have decided not to search at all, and everything in between
This isn't a separate therapy "product." It's simply part of who I am in the room with you, whatever you've come to talk about.
If you'd like to talk
There's no pressure and no script. A free twenty-minute consultation is the easiest way to find out if this feels like the right fit, for adoption-related work or anything else you're carrying.