Not feeling good

I’m not feeling so good today. After quite a significant improvement, a setback is a bit of a blow.

I learnt on the internet that a number of donor conceived adults were meeting this weekend in London. I would have liked to have attended but at the moment it is impossible. I would so much have liked to meet other people like myself and to learn how they have reacted to the situation.

I read recently about another such meeting where out of the 19 people present, 17 had experienced the divorce of the parents. I am not surprised. Regardless of whether the whole thing is kept secret from the child or society at large, there is a real imbalance in the family. I wonder often how my parents would have coped had my father lived longer. I don’t doubt the strength of their marriage but I do doubt whether the fiction would have been maintained into adulthood that my father was genetically related to me.

Since I have an older brother who was adopted at the age of six just after I was born, the family situation was fraught with problems to say the least. I haven’t had much to do with him over the last few years but I must say that I feel much more sympathy with his situation now. I have no idea how much he was told about his own situation. My parents were very keen to have a ready-made family but I don’t think they thought it through from our point of view.

I’m only glad I didn’t have that problem myself.