Mother & Child Reunion

Zara h phillips, born in the early 60s was adopted at two months. Age 23, zara decided to search for birth mother and went on to document the reunion in her book, mother and me. Her story highlights the mixed emotions and life long impact of her adoption

In Mother Me Zara explores the profound emotions of exactly what it felt like to grow up knowing that she was adopted, surrounded by love and yet feeling no connection to her adoptive family. She explores the far-reaching impact of her adoption on her relationships and self-esteem, as well as the anxieties, insecurities and sense of isolation and loss that she has battled with throughout her life.

Zara’s birth mother Pat had been 17 when she had a brief relationship with Zara’s father Vittorio. Zara is yet to find her birth father. In an interview in the Telegraph newspaper, Zara reveals the circumstances of her adoption: “(My mother) was an unmarried English girl pregnant by an Italian; her parents were so ashamed. She later told me that if she’d been able to have an abortion, she would have. But this was 1964, and her only option was adoption.

She goes on to explain: “My adoptive parents loved me, but I grew up feeling joyless. I even told my adoptive mum when I was eight that I was depressed. She just said, ‘You’re too young to know what that means.’ But I think it stemmed from a sense of loss… I always knew I was adopted. I think my mother told me when I was four or five. I have no memory of actually being told, just of the feelings as a child.”

Now 43, Zara is a singer songwriter and lives in New Jersey with her American husband Johnathan, 11-yearold son Zachary and daughters Kayla, aged 7 and Arden age 5.

Zara’s own attitude to motherhood has certainly been coloured by the relationship with her childhood experiences and the relationship with her adoptive parents. “Parenting was much harder when Zachary was a baby, as he was my first and I had a lot of anxiety. I couldn’t leave him in a room because I actually thought he’d disappear into thin air….I think that came from a real fear of separation.”

The book provides a unique insight into pregnancy and motherhood from the perspective of an adopted woman and offers a frank and honest account of how love, marriage and the birth of her own children helped Zara to reach an understanding of her past and a final sense of compassion for both her birth and adoptive families. *

Mother Me is published March 2 2008 by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) . Price £8.95. Copies are available from www.baaf.org.uk

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