I just stumbled on this from a google search about something else completely but it must have been serendipity as I am an adopter (in the UK). I was impressed by your article. Most children placed for adoption nowadays over here have learning difficulties or developmental delay, so can't really express themselves as eloquentally as you do about their loss and grief. Thanks very much for the insight!

Incidentally, my own son's friends occasionally ask him about his 'real' mother (never gets asked about his real father, what is it with that?). He's not ready to talk about it yet with them, but he really hates the term, perhaps not surprisingly given his experiences at the hand of his 'real' mother. Adoption has lots of different stories. A one size fits all solution to child protection isn't really possible in my opinion. If adoption is ever considered to be the best for a child then that means something almost unimaginably bad has already happened to them. Not something most people really understand even nowadays I think.