Hi, there I am Fiona I’m an adoptee. I was adopted at 8 months old after being in two different foster placements and 2 hospital stays. I have my great-niece from the family I was adopted out of on a Special Guardianship Order. Unusual I know but it’s working well.
Well, here we are back from our holiday. We went to Morecambe for a week. We had gone there a couple of years ago and loved it. Booked an AirBnB, basement flat at the Happy Mount Park end of the town. Choosing where we go and where we stay revolves around what’s best for Georgie. She struggles when we are all stuffed into a cheap hotel room and so do we! Taking a child with complex needs on holiday is no mean feat. When she was little and in a pram, it was much easier. People don’t understand the complexity of a child with trauma. I don’t understand the complexity of a child with trauma yet. The fluffy cloud feeling of adopting a child and you bringing up that child to be everything you ever wanted parenting to be is not always how it pans out.
Our days need to be planned well and be full of things to do. Georgie, needs to know what’s happening next, when it is happening and why it is happening. Deviating from said planning causes a huge wave of backlash that can last a long time. We tried having no plans once and that didn’t work out very well. The anxiety of not knowing what was happening next was too much for our tornado. Knowledge is power as the saying goes.
She is also just one week away from starting year two at school. Three of her classmates have moved on and she is having three new classmates this year. Georgie is in a small special unit for year one and year two children. There are only six children in the unit. The first two weeks of the school holidays were filled with questions about where the three moving-on children were going and much concern and tears over one of them who was going to a new unit on his own. Now we are on the daily, hourly questions of, What day is the school on? What day is it tomorrow? Lots of tears and I don’t want to go back to school.
Back to the holiday. Morecambe is just beautiful. We walked for miles and miles. Me and Brian were shattered. We are not young parents! We had booked a dog-friendly place which meant that little Sparkles could come with us. Oh, the joy of having a garden and the huge difference that it made, especially in the mornings. I am now on a mission to get a house with a garden.
We had invited two of our friends to come and stay over for a night with us, one at the start of the holiday and one at the end. Georgie loved having someone else with us. The endless questions though about what time they were coming, where will they sleep, when are they leaving etc. The funniest thing is that we get literally dumped when someone else is with us. Both of our friends had to endure their names being called at least a thousand times to come and do this, and come and do that. Both were very gracious and a great help to us on those two days.
Spot the same cafe, a safe place to take Georgie where she was happy to sit and not be too distracted.
Next, drama was Brian telling Georgie all about Tyson Fury. Told Georgie we lived close to him. That was it, Tyson had to have one of my books. He will love it, Mummy, right Dad where does he live? She was then on a mission. We had to find Tyson’s house. Eventually, after getting it wrong twice we posted my first book in his letterbox. I await his review with bated breath…….
Not many people in Morecambe don’t know Georgie now. She is the ultimate in question asking. We passed a homeless couple twice and each time Georgie had to ask them why they didn’t have a home, what do they eat. and a raft of other awkward questions, which they answered for her. The second time we met them she had her box of money which has beads in it too. She wanted to give them some money. She popped a couple of coins and some beads in to make them happy.
They had moved on by day three…….We were quite happy because Georgie thought they had got their own home now.
We have Georgie on what is called a Special Guardianship Order which is essentially one step away from being fully adopted. We were encouraged to go down the adoption route with her, but I felt it was much better for Georgie to stay as she was with the order. She has full access to her biological family and has great times with her sisters and Nana, aunties etc. She can ask anything about her background and we can give her the full picture. I love this as my memories of being adopted and knowing nothing or very little are not great.
I was adopted by a great family who loved and cared for me, we wanted for nothing as children. Their love and care is most probably what stopped me from being sent to jail on many occasions, as I would stop and think about what I was doing and how it would affect them. My only anxiety was not knowing who I really was and why did my biological family not want me.
Georgie is in a good position to know the best of both sides of her life. One day she may say that she would like to go and live with her biological family. That is a day we don’t look forward to but we would not stop her from going if the time and the circumstances were right.
Thank you for reading my blogging journey so far. Next Monday I will be sharing on back to school.