A feeling of loss

I have made arrangements to have my DNA taken and stored this week as it will change if/when I have a transplant. I realise that I haven’t a hope of finding out who my father really was or possible half-siblings before the bone marrow transplant. There is just so much going on. Of all the events which have happened this year, that was the most challenging as it changed every perception I had about myself and has made me rethink all my relationships.

Perhaps when/if I emerge from the challenge I face in the bubble I can revisit this topic. I am a little ultra-sensitive at the moment and although I would have liked to contribute to the debate about donor conception, I think perhaps I must leave this to others who feel, perhaps rightly, that they are more knowledgeable. There have been so many areas in my life where I have found that a head-on approach is not always the best and in the end I have usually found alternative routes.

As a newcomer to the debate, in many ways I lack experience but what I do have because I learnt about my origins so late in life, is the experience of being on the other side of the debate. I don’t mean I thought donor conception was a good idea, but having been through the years of conceiving and bringing up children myself without knowledge of my origins, I was able to form my own ideas about adoption, IVF, abortion, eugenics without the subjectivity which comes from knowing about one’s own origins.

One of the greatest challenges of the truth about my conception is the feeling of loss. I am fortunate in having a husband and family of my own and I know I must look forward but we all come from somewhere. Most of us need to know about who we are and our history and I still feel that half of that has been lost. It is easy to dismiss this but when we hear about children adopted from one culture into another, of the latest schemes to manufacture embryos but we must start to think less about the sad lives of the couples who would love to have children, and more about the children themselves and their needs.