Author Archives: cherry bakewell

I am on the brink of discovering you. I now now an address for somewhere where you may have lived. I could be barking up the wrong tree or I could be too late. Maybe you have passed by now…

Your date of birth was December 1946 if the information given to me by my birth mother was correct. The address I found online corroborates this information. Now all I need to do is work out what I am going to say.

The problem is, although you knew of my existence, your family may not. I believe I was a secret swept under the carpet. There was certain information my birth mother gave, but then she seized up with the information and I had to do my own digging. Well I managed to dig up the truth about her, so perhaps I will be successful again. I know I need to tread carefully, but I think I have a right to know more about you. I want you to know about me. Surely I have the right to know? You brought me into this world, partly. I think I deserve to at least get the chance to find out more. Apparently you were a decent person. I guess there is only one way to find out…

I have a philosophy of the very simple aforementioned phrase. Basically, a lot of people worry about possible scenarios happening to them. Most of which never even materialise. So my motto is “why worry about something which is beyond your control?”

I am constantly surrounded by anxiety , as previously mentioned in my blog of my husband suffering with mental health issues. He worries about so many things. Such as getting cancer, catching Covid, being bitten by spiders. I say to him, why worry about something until you know for certain that you need to worry? Even if a doctor refers you to a hospital for a scan, the moment that you should start to worry about something more sinister should be when the malignant diagnosis has been made. Other than that, the negative thoughts should not even enter your psyche.

It’s important to stay positive. The fact of the matter is, we don’t know how long we have on this planet. Life is not infinite. Can we afford to waste time on worrying about things which are mere possibilities rather than certainties? Let’s enjoy every moment of our lives rather than worrying and speculating!

Today has been a particularly stressful day in the Royal Society of Paranoid Husbands. I have had to deal with a number of incidents of paranoia from my husband.

Dealing with paranoia as a carer is very difficult. Patience is wearing thin. I am not a professional, so my tact in dealing with situations is not always the best and is becoming less and less reassuring to him as time passes. Where do you draw the line and say that the paranoia is a real, noteworthy medical concern? I find the stress levels rising on a daily basis and are beginning to affect our soon to be teenage daughter. I already suffer from high blood pressure, so this is not helping, although I know it’s not behaviour which he is choosing, so that makes it harder.

I am certain that the media and access to the internet exacerbates the paranoia. Constantly, he seeks affirmation of his concerns online from Google and it’s not always reassuring. He has a fear of spiders and lately we have noticed at least 30 false widow spiders in our back garden, on our fences. He has also found some cobwebs indoors so immediately assumes that these spiders are in our houses and will bite him so that he will die.

As you can imagine, last year, his entire fears circled around Covid 19. He still talks about it every day but he will now go back into public places again, although still finding it stressful. He obsesses over the statistics of the number of positive cases and the number of people dying.

Health concerns underpin the majority of his paranoia. He thinks he will die at an early age- he recently was convinced that he would catch Covid 19 again, even though he has already had it and has been double vaccinated.

His diabetes and fluctuating sugar levels can cause some irrational behaviour but not to the extent of paranoia. He was recently told that his eye sight was deteriorating. Of course, for several weeks he was convinced that he would soon go blind.

Another paranoid attribute of his is thinking that people are talking about him. If he entered a room and someone laughed at precisely that moment, he would immediately assume they were laughing at him and get annoyed- it would cause him not to like them anymore and feel threatened by them. Telephone conversations that are had whilst he is not in the room that he is not privy to make him anxious. He wants to know every detail of the conversation and is concerned people are bad mouthing him or don’t like him.

All of these behaviour traits reveal to me a complete lack of confidence in himself. When I first met him, he came across as being hugely confident, almost to the point of being cocky and irritating. It must have been a front to cover all of these anxieties that he displays within.

If I am honest, I am really struggling day in and day out with the paranoia and anxiety that he has been exhibiting. I want to be able to help him, but I am not sure how. People say that to be a carer you need to look after yourself, which is easier said than done. If anyone resonates with any of the situations above or has advice then I would be interested to hear from you.

I hear this phrase all the time; people referring to their partners. What elements are necessary to be classed as the love of someone else’s life?

Is it someone that you agree with all the time and hang on to their every word? Is it someone that you have to go everywhere with and have the same interests? Is it someone that you defend to others when someone else is bad mouthing them?

Is it ok to disagree a lot and get heated? Is it alright that you can’t wait for them to get to work so that you have five minutes’ peace to gather your own thoughts again? Is it ok to spend time apart and enjoy your own company? Is it acceptable to let off some steam about them to a friend because they are driving you mad?

Everyone’s perceptions on this topic will vary. How often do you think you should need to have your own space? Is it acceptable to have your own set of friends which don’t overlap? Do you have to find the same interests?

Another interesting concept is how people compare their partners to previous ones. How is it possible to compare them when they are so different to each other? All of them will have some endearing qualities. Do people rank them hierarchically by considering who is the least annoying and who they argue with least?

Surely some argument and debate is healthy in a relationship. You are not always going to see eye to eye. I suppose it’s whether you can put those differences of opinion aside and not allow them to become obstacles that will guarantee whether someone can be classed as the love of your life…

Most of the time, people associate their identity with who has brought them up. Although this to me is important, one of the things which I feel make me myself is the fact that I was adopted at an early age. I suppose it then brings up the idea of nature v nurture. Am I who I am because of my genetics or because of who has moulded and shaped me?

Knowing about my adoption has enabled me to be quite a resilient person. Despite having several setbacks in life, I feel that knowing about my adoption made me more determined not to let anyone hurt me. The idea of being given up at birth was devastating, but at the same time, the idea that a group of people out there were actively seeking me to be a part of their family counteracted that. I spent my whole childhood knowing very little indeed about my birth mother.

As it happened, it was when I became a mother myself that I decided that I needed to find out more about where I came from. I wanted more information about who my birth parents were, their backgrounds and why I had been given up for adoption in the first place. The importance of my identity became paramount to me, as I had such a strong bond with my own daughter and wondered if it was going to be possible to have the same kind of bond with my birth mother.

It took a long time to find out any information about my birth parents after I began to set things in motion. A social worker eventually got in touch with me and told me about my birth mother and what had happened to me over the years. I found out that her name had changed as she had got married since she had given birth to me. In this day and age, I did something which was convenient and easy to do- I began to search for her online using Google search.

For months and months, it seemed like a pointless exercise trawling through the internet. Nothing was coming up that looked possible for who I was trying to trace and I began to lose hope. I thought that perhaps it wasn’t to be. However, it was a strange turn of events in the end. One day, while my husband was at work and the house seemed unusually quiet, I had a sudden feeling, I guess you could call it intuition, that I should do another search. I don’t know why, it just felt like the right thing to do at the time. So, as usual, I inputted my birth mother’s name into Facebook this time, and a different photo came up to the usual ones that had been pinging up for the previous few months. I started hard at the photo and thought to myself, “I recognise this woman”. She seems familiar in some way. It was like some of the features that she possessed were the same as mine. So, taking a deep breath, I sent a message, asking if she had had a daughter way back in 1982. Within a couple of hours, I had received a response. As you can imagine, my heart was absolutely pounding to see a response. But I still had doubt in my mind and concern that it would be a dead end.

Opening the message, it seemed there was hope after all, and with much to-ing and fro-ing, eventually we realised that we had indeed found each other. During the same evening, I received a message also from my birth mother’s husband, welcoming me into their lives. I guess he wanted me to know that I was accepted by him and their two younger children (I had two half sisters!)

At first, it was really exciting getting to know each other and we talked a lot. I found out some information about my birth father but not as much as I would like to have learnt as she didn’t always feel comfortable talking about him. I think that even after all this time, she still wanted to protect him, I was the result of an affair, and my father already had a wife and children, so she was worried about destroying their life if his wife found out.

Unfortunately, I have still not been able to trace him. It’s something which I know will play on my mind for the rest of my life. In a way I feel that pursuing him might seem selfish, and it could completely destroy his family, especially if he never told his wife what had happened. He did know that I existed, and asked about me frequently, according to my birth mother. I also feel slightly reluctant to track him down because of the happy childhood that I did experience. If he doesn’t want to meet me then it would be like being rejected twice- once at birth, then once again. Although I am resilient, I am not sure how easy rejection is to deal with.

I often watch “long lost families” but I find myself feeling very emotional watching them, as the chords strike something personal inside me. My husband has asked why I don’t go on a programme like that or do one of those Facebook campaigns to find someone, but also, in a way, I don’t want my personal life paraded around on the public domain, especially when I work in education and am a role model to children. Hence my anonymity on this blog. So I guess patience is key. Maybe if I keep searching, eventually I will discover what I am looking for. If I’m destined to…

It’s funny how people have the need to feel part of something. It’s a human need to belong. When I found out I was adopted, thankfully, I was already part of a loving family and felt like I belonged to that. I know that not everyone’s experiences of it would be the same as mine.

In society, there is a need for people to belong. They say what people want to hear so that they are accepted by others. In a way, I felt like that growing up. Although I was part of a loving family, I still had expectations to fulfill. For example, my family held strong religious beliefs. I was expected to follow in their footsteps. For most people, that would send you one way or another. Either brainwashing you into conformity or causing you to rebel against what you are being forced into. For me, my family probably saw me as a rebel. You see, I do uphold a lot of the same beliefs, but not necessarily feeling the need to be evangelical about expressing my feelings. I was a private person regarding my views and beliefs, until recently, when certain topics in the media have been brought to my attention and sickened me to the stomach.

There are certain topics which invite strong views and opinions that people have contested for years. The ones that stick out to me at the moment are racism and homophobia. I believe that changes need to be made in society in order to develop a greater tolerance and understanding of these areas. As a teacher, I feel the importance of justice and equality is paramount. If schools embrace a more inclusive and transparent approach to discussing these topics, which in my opinion is essential, then what about when these children go home to narrow minded families? A whole society- wide approach needs to be adopted. No matter how much we try to address these issues in school and promote tolerance and liberty, if society disagrees with our approach, then we are banging our heads against a brick wall and progress cannot be made.

Once these issues start to be explored and expressed more freely with empathy and tolerance, people’s mental health will surely improve. People will feel that they will be able to be themselves and conformity will become less of a necessity. It’s about educating the children and encouraging them to approach situations in a level headed manner , being reflective rather than reactive, with tolerance and acceptance which will promote a way forward. No one should be regarded as superior to anyone else. We should all be treated equally, no matter our backgrounds, and no one has the right to judge anyone else.

As I mentioned previously in my bio, I have a husband who suffers from anxiety and depression. When I first met him, he appeared to be a very happy person and was very sociable, thriving on conversation and interaction with large numbers of people. However, it didn’t take long for his anxiety to show, mainly through paranoia and possessive behaviour. It was clear that he thought I was going to leave him as he had been abandoned by girlfriends / wives in the past, usually by them leaving him for other people. It’s a condition which improved with time, due to a build up of trust, but every now and then, his old anxieties will bubble back up to the surface.

As time went on, his anxiety exacerbated through driving. We live in an area with heavy traffic and it’s on the commute to London for many people, so patience is a very low level thing. Gradually, he started driving less and less, so I needed to drive more and more until he no longer drove at all. This put an immense pressure on me, especially when doing long drives up and down the country for holidays or breaks away.

Throughout Covid, his condition worsened and he started developing traits of OCD as well as increased paranoia. I am delighted to say that he really benefitted from the NHS responders, who would call him every day. In fact, they still do.

It’s hard when dealing with a loved one with anxiety and depression because they don’t necessarily see things as logically as you do. Reasoning becomes very difficult for them. As a logically-minded person, I find it easy to rationalise situations, so it’s harder to recognise why someone else wouldn’t see things in the same way.

I think that another difficult aspect is that as a carer of someone with anxiety and depression, I can’t offload my thoughts, feelings and worries to my partner as I should be able to. If I show any signs of feeling worried about anything at all, then it straight away makes his condition worse. So I feel like I am constantly holding in any anxiety I have as I can’t express it. If I have friends, he always wants to be a part of it, he wants to share them too, and do everything together, probably due to his concerns that one day I am just going to walk out on him. He is always worried what other people think of him, and that is completely different to how I feel. My view is that if you don’t like me, you can find someone else to hang about with! I guess what I am trying to say here is that carers should also have a break from their partners as it’s easier to enable our loved ones to bring us down.

I believe that in this day and age, a positive mindset is essential. It’s all too easy to allow others around us to drag us down and consider the what ifs, whys and wherefores. Recently, I’ve begun to reflect on the increasing importance of acknowledging the things that we have in our lives and being grateful for everything, especially the small things. For me, it’s things like hearing the sound of the sea. I was brought up near the seaside, and now I don’t live close to it anymore, it’s made me yearn for it even more. We should be recognising the importance of family and loved ones, rather than considering the material goods that we possess. If Covid has taught us anything, it should be about the finite nature of life. That we don’t know how long we have left with people. Appreciating every single moment together and accepting that we are all humans, inevitably we make mistakes. Despite knowing this, we still expect perfection from others. By now, surely we should be more accepting towards each other? We are not always going to agree on everything and all approaches. But tolerance is absolutely necessary.