Brought to light.

What we have been waiting for.

Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash

[NOTE: This post is split in two, myself first then my mother (Sharon) afterwards, hence this post might be a bit long.]

[* = name changed to protect living person’s identity]

I realise that I haven’t officially written on here in a number of weeks but I felt it was important that I pause my usual ramblings to give myself and my Mum time to compose this and make it stick in people’s minds, so without further ado, here’s what we’ve been waiting for.

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DANIEL:

240 days.

That’s how long it took for my mother to receive information about her that she should’ve had since she was born. As someone who isn’t an adoptee, joining my mum on this journey to discover more about her beginnings has opened my eyes to the numerous hurdles adoptees face and how fortunate the ‘regular Joe Soap’ is that they don’t have to face many hurdles at all.

I have my reservations about how this was handled but what I will say is, that it was undoubtedly a long wait. Instead of the 30 days that Minister O’Gorman claimed would be the period someone would have to wait, with a further disclosure that it could take 90 days to fulfil a request, this was too good to be true.

We applied on January 11th, we received them on September 8th. There was one big file about 30 pages long that consisted of database pages, correspondence between religious orders about my Mum, correspondence between religious orders and my grandmother, Ana*, and finally records from the homes themselves about Mum’s stay which I thought, as Mum’s request had been with a case worker since around April 23rd and a big chunk of it was database pages, why that almost took five months to find especially seeing as most if not all of this was meant to be in a database, the purpose of it was to be able to find things easier, I’ll never know.

It was fascinating for me to see this, Mum never had this - it was new, unexplored territory. Stuff that might have seemed arbitrary to many, notes about birth weight, vaccinations - was insightful to know the care Mum had received. But safe to say, it had its fair share of surprises. When reading the correspondence section of her files, the correspondence between the orders (both in Bessborough and Stamullen) seems to be business as usual for them. Except, there was something we missed the first time. In one of these religious orders’ correspondence (between Sr. Norbert of Bessborough and Sr. Philippa of Stamullen, what we thought was a spacing in the letter was a part of the letter which had been redacted. What was Mum not supposed to see in her records?

The only silver lining was that she was described as “healthy, well and free from infection”. In correspondence between the orders and Ana*, they praise her for not being selfish in taking my mum with her saying “May God bless and reward you for your unselfishness”. Irritated, I kept reading. It made me see it in a new light reading Ana’s* own words jump off the page admitting how she wouldn’t be able to give my mum the life she deserves and I broke down at reading the final letter from Ana* to Sr. Philippa in Stamullen at how difficult it would be for her to part from my Mum if she went back to see her at the recommendation of Fr. Keane (because of course, celibate priests and nuns were the perfect people to make these decisions). For the sake of privacy, I won’t go too into detail but it was heart-wrenching to see my grandmother’s words written on paper and to read her parting words to my Mum.

We continued, reading the admission registers and gleaned more details about Ana* and Mum. And that’s when something caught my eye. For her three months in Bessborough to the nuns and women there, Ana* didn’t exist, only Bernardine — her house name. [NOTE: If you haven’t already, please read ‘Bessborough’ by Deirdre Finnerty] I say that because I read the accounts of three women who went through it. They described their experiences in the homes and no matter how hard I tried, I could not stop picturing Ana* doing the same work they were made to do (while heavily pregnant, I might add) with no remuneration. It gives a very vivid, but haunting picture of life inside Bessborough.

All of these records, somewhere on the page, annotations were reading “Bernardine” scrawled in a corner of Mum’s records as if it was Ana’s* nickname. What we were pleased to learn was Mum didn’t spend as much time as we thought in Bessborough, the rough dates we had [and were incredibly rough], she only spent a little over two weeks there before being transferred to Stamullen where she’d spend a little under a month and a half before being adopted to my grandparents Colum & Kate. [Their real names]

There was so much going through my mind as we’ve only gone through about half of the file: “What else are we going to see?”, and there, written in red ink was my biological grandfather’s name. We looked at each other, stunned, with his name staring right back at us. And, here’s where it gets interesting, I mentioned Fr. Keane, who referred Ana* to Bessborough. Kate had a sister-in-law, Anne Keane and Fr. Keane was her (I think) 1st or 2nd cousin. Fr. Keane was the one who told Colum and Kate about my Mum being up in Stamullen and the fact they were in Dublin at the time, they didn’t have far to go. So, there was always a network in how this all worked and the “everyone knows everyone”, couldn’t be more true.

On the Bessborough religious order’s baptismal register, we saw her entry with two notes next to it. The first part was a note of who my Mum was adopted to, where she was living, when the adoption was finalised and her new name.

And this part I think is just plain creepy. The second note that was made was a note of her marriage. This time, staring back at us was my Dad’s full name, their wedding date, and the address and postcode of the church they got married in! [Which happened in the 90s and in the UK] How on earth could they have known that? There wasn’t an online civil marriage index at the time and (confirmed by Mum) there was no newspaper notice about it either. I did tweet asking for answers on how this was possible, it was suggested to me on more than one occasion that it could have been added when asked for proof of baptism, there was a slight problem with that theory. The marriage was noted on the baptismal record that was under my Mum’s birth name, which she didn’t know until about 20 or so years after she got married. So, I just find it SO ironic when it’s purported that it’s unknown where 859 children who died in Bessborough are buried. If the order had this on my Mum WAY after she was out of their care, then I find it very hard to believe they don’t know where these children are.

But perhaps the strangest bit was my mother’s admission record into Stamullen, her birth mother’s name is wrong. So Mum was supposedly the daughter of a woman named Mary Flynn in “C’town” Mullingar, Meath” and not Ana’s* daughter. This part just left us with more questions than answers as there was no reason why this Mary Flynn should be in my mother’s entry. It was clear who my Mum’s mother was based on the one document that had been sent up with her to Stamullen which they’d received.

Despite this, it’s just another thing in this situation that makes me more determined to uncover more about these women and children who died there and their stories.

There needs to be more thorough investigations done into Bessborough. Myself and Carmel Cantwell have been campaigning for this here, here and here. We will be heard and as I’ve said time and time again, this isn’t over. It isn’t over until proper justice is delivered for every survivor and decedent and nothing is left hidden.

SHARON:

I always knew I was adopted, my parents told me from a young age. They made me feel special, wanted, loved. I was lucky, I had a good life and a good family.

I was always curious about where I came from. My mother said she would never stop me looking for my birth family, but did advise to wait till I was settled in my life and old enough to deal with whatever I discovered.

My mother and my father had both passed before I met any of my birth family, so I never got to tell them about my journey.

I was sent a form many years ago by a family friend, where you could register your interest in tracing birth family and saying if you were interested in contacting siblings etc, I filled in the form but never got round to posting it. I wasn’t ready to start my search at that point.

I did try contacting the adoption agency involved in my adoption. Their name was on some paperwork I had found after my mother died. I was married by this time and trying to find out about any medical conditions that I should know about before starting a family, but they couldn’t tell me much. This was always something I wished I had access to. 

It was many years later (2017) that I received a cryptic letter stating that they (Tusla) had information that I might be interested in. So a telephone call later I discovered I had a half sister out there, and my journey to meet my sister and later my birth mother and her children began.

My social worker was lovely and we met a few times. She explained how the process would work. My sister and I began to write letters and exchange basic information. The only thing I wasn’t a big fan of was the idea of someone else reading my letters, but that was how it was done. The Social worker was there when I met my sister for the first time, and was confident that my birth mother would come round to the idea of meeting us given time.

It was wonderful that day when I finally met my sister for the first time, it was strange looking at a relative, trying to see if there was any resemblance, both of us nervous and excited at the same time. We’ve kept in touch since then, meeting up once a year at least.

I wrote to my birth mother as well, exchanging basic information and hoping that she would agree to meet one day, which she did but then covid hit and everything stopped for months. When we did finally meet for the first time it was masked up, 2 meters apart, windows open and just for 1 hour. But it was the first step and we were happy to meet and stay in touch afterwards. 

My birth mother wasn’t keen to discuss my birth father a whole lot, just giving me a surname and that they had split before I was born. She gave me a reason why and I didn’t push for more as I could see it wasn’t a subject she wanted to discuss any further. 

I found out I had 2 more half siblings from her current marriage, but they didn’t know about me at that stage. I had gone from being the youngest of 2 to the oldest of 4! My birth mother told her children about myself and my half sister nearly 2 years ago now, they took the news well asking if we’d ever meet up, which was nice to hear.

My family met my half sister first, maybe a year after I first met her, and then we all met my birth mother about a year after my first meeting. Then eventually all five of us got together for the first time, back in April 2023. It was lovely, very relaxed with everyone getting to talk to each other and begin the process of getting to learn bits about each other’s lives. It will always be a different relationship between us all, a family but not. Because not everyone in my birth mother’s family knows about me or my half sister, it is still a secret, not discussed so a certain amount of care is needed. I don’t want to cause any harm to her relationship with her family. I’m happy to have her in my life as much as she wants. 

While all this was going on I sent in a request to Tusla for my birth information earlier this year, just to see if there was anything else that I could find out about my early life, my father or any other details no matter how small. It took a while, about eight months!  but it finally came and in it was a piece of information I didn’t have, my father’s full name! 

Now I just have to decide if I want to go about finding and meeting my father or not. But that’s another days problem.

For now I have a chance to build a relationship with my birth mother and my siblings. We keep in touch and have plans to meet up soon again. Life is good, I’ll take any opportunity to see them if they are interested.