I didn’t think adoption affected me – then I read a letter about my birth mother

I always knew I was adopted. It wasn’t delivered with an EastEnders drum-roll, no late-night confession, no kitchen-sink reveal. It was simply one of the facts of our house, filed alongside other unremarkable truths: we live here, you’re adopted, we love you. Simple. My parents have always been very matter-of-fact people. And because it was simple, it was also easy to make it small. I grew up loved and grounded and, in that most British way, taught not to “dwell”. I felt lucky and I acted like luck was the end of the story. As my friend Martin Rowson, a fellow adoptee, writes: “the fact that I’m adopted / Hums constantly, so constant / That almost always / I’m left blithely unaware.” There’s a lot in that “almost”. For most of my life, the hum sat somewhere beneath the daily noise: school, friends, gigs, love, ambition, the usual thrashing about in the world. I didn’t bring it up unless it came up. If someone said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were adopted,” I’d joke, “Why would you? I don’t wear a lanyard.” I meant it. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just another detail about me, like how I prefer Blur to Oasis, or like salt and vinegar crisps. But details have a way of turning, in time, into doors. (Photo: Supplied).

My 'later life letter'

I met Katy five years ago. She’s a social worker. Early in our relationship, I found her at her desk table late at night, still working. She was writing a ‘later life letter’. If you haven’t heard of them, later life letters are written for children who have been adopted (or who are long-term looked after). They’re a bridge across time: a few pages, written carefully, explaining what is known about a child’s early life and birth family. The idea is to give the adopted person something vital that so many of us lack — a narrative that isn’t pure silence. They can include names, ages, circumstances, small human details: what a parent liked, what they were good at, what they struggled with. Sometimes, if they exist, photographs. They are often treasured because they are one of the few voices that speak across the gap. These letters are usually given to adoptive children when they are teenagers, though in recent years, attitudes have begun to change, with adoption talked about more openly from the beginning, and some children having letterbox contact with their biological parents. (Photo: Supplied).

Feeling a shift in myself

I didn’t have such contact with my birth family when I was growing up in the 80s. But I did have my own Later Life Letter. I first read it at eighteen. It contained a paragraph about my birth and, crucially, a couple of photographs: my birth mother, and two boys — my brothers. It was the first time I’d seen their faces. I remember the oddness of it: recognising someone you’ve never met; feeling something without being able to name it; holding a piece of paper that is both intimate and administrative. Watching Katy write her letters — the care she took over every sentence, the way she tried to honour people she’d never meet again — I found myself going back to mine. I read it again, older now than the person who wrote it, older now than my birth mother was when she had me. And something in me shifted. The hum got louder. (Photo: Emily Fae).

Digging deep into my buried feelings

Part of what woke up was gratitude. I was adopted at five weeks old by my parents, John and Annette Wright, a couple who couldn’t have children of their own. I grew up in Highgate for the first three years of my life, then we moved out to Coggeshall in north Essex. Picture skew-whiff Tudor houses and enough antique shops that Lovejoy filmed there three summers in a row – a childhood backdrop that felt safe enough to take for granted. My parents did the parenting: school runs, packed lunches, lifts, new coats, the steady presence of two adults who showed up. They weren’t hand-wringers. They didn’t perform emotion, but we (me and my brother, Scott, who was also adopted) certainly knew we were loved. For a long time, I didn’t want to “shake it up”. I was so lucky — why go digging? Then I got divorced. I spent a few turbulent years as a single parent. Like many men who’ve been trained to keep moving, I tried to outrun whatever hurt was chasing me. I did what I’ve always done: I filled up the space. Work, noise, consumption, jokes, busyness, anything to avoid stillness. Eventually, I did the sensible thing and went to therapy. I mentioned, breezily, that I was adopted, but it wasn’t really a big thing, and my therapist gave me a look that translated roughly as: “Oh mate.” (Photo: Supplied).

The 'primal wound' theory

It was around then that I first heard of the “primal wound” theory — the idea that separation from a biological mother at birth can leave an imprint that shows up later as grief, anxiety, mistrust, and difficulties in relationships. I’m wary of any theory that tries to become a master key. Life is messier than that. But I couldn’t deny the jolt of recognition. Not because it made me feel special or tragic, but because it offered language for the “almost”. It offered a way of hearing the hum. So I did what modern people do when they have a question that hurts: I went looking on the internet. One night, I found my birth mother on social media. I didn’t even mean to. It felt both absurd and terrifying that something so monumental could happen in the same casual posture as scrolling. There she was, older now, living a life I knew nothing about: holiday photographs, birthday meals, occasional tributes to her own mother. Scraps. But scraps are powerful when you’ve grown up with silence. (Photo: Getty).

Channeling my emotions

Through those scraps, I found my brother,s too. I could see the outlines of another life — the life I might have had. And here is where I should be clear: I have not contacted them. I haven’t reached out, haven’t sent the message that would crack everything open. I don’t know if I ever will. Other people’s lives aren’t mine to storm into just because I’m curious. I am mindful that what feels to me like a search for wholeness might feel to them like an intrusion. This journey might end here, or it might not. Instead, I wrote poems. That might sound like evasion, but for me it was a way of telling the truth without making demands of strangers. It was a way to stand in the gap and look both ways: towards the loving, ordinary childhood I was given, and towards the shadow-life that runs alongside it. The poems are my attempt to hear the hum properly — not to turn my adoption into a melodrama, but to acknowledge that even the luckiest adoptee carries two stories at once. (Photo: Getty).

Accepting my foundations

If adoption shaped my life, it did so in subtle ways. It made me curious, perhaps too curious. It made me hungry for detail. It made me sensitive to belonging — not in an obvious, constant ache, but in the way your eye keeps darting to the edge of a room, checking the exits. It also made me profoundly grateful for the people who chose me and raised me. My parents didn’t have to take a newborn who wasn’t theirs and love him as if he was. They did. They gave me a home and a brother and the kind of stability that allows a child to be carefree. That matters. It’s the foundation of everything. But foundations don’t cancel origins. They sit on top of them. When I watched Katy writing later life letters, I realised something: a later life letter isn’t just information. It’s care, written down. It’s a social worker saying: you matter enough for me to gather your story and hold it steady until you’re old enough to carry it yourself. (Photo: Getty).

Newfound appreciation

That act — the careful holding of narrative — is what started me looking again. And, in the end, it’s what I’ve tried to do for myself. And in exploring this path, it has brought me closer to my adoptive parents. They gave me their blessing to be on this journey, and we have found ourselves talking about adoption and the love we have for each other more than we have in years. I used to say, casually, “I’m adopted, but it’s not really a big thing.” I still believe that can be true. Adoption can be ordinary. It can be simply life. But I now understand the other truth alongside it: it can be both nothing and everything. The hum is always there. Almost always, you don’t hear it. Until you do. (Photo: Getty).