Jo Willis (far left) as a teenager with her adoptive family. Photo / Supplied
Jo Willis (far left) as a teenager with her adoptive family. Photo / Supplied
Like thousands of Kiwi children, Jo Willis and Brigitta Baker grew up not knowing their biological families due to closed adoption laws in New Zealand. As the Government reforms the country's 67-year-old Adoption Act, the pair share how they connected with their birth parents
'They wanted me'
Jo Willis was adopted in 1958 by a Piopio couple who were unable to have their own children. She decided that at 21 she would start searching for her birth family.
While living in Wellington, she wrote a letter to voluntary group Jigsaw asking to be added to its register for adopted children and birth parents who wanted to connect with each other.
I remember walking to a local post box to send it; as the letter slipped through the slot I was overwhelmed with panic and desperately wanted to retrieve it. I felt sick; I had started something I might not be able to control. What if my birth mother didn't want me? What if the information showed I had been born because of rape or something similar?
It was too late to change my mind. The letter had gone. The next day, on my birthday, a friend called and said, "Jo, have you seen the Dominion Post this morning?" When I told him I hadn't, he excitedly explained that he had been reading the newspaper on the train into Wellington and had seen an advertisement in the notices section with my birth details.
The notice read: Born Taihape 15/9/1959
Happy 21st birthday to you from your birth family.
I couldn't breathe. I heard myself say, "This can't be true", then fear slowly subsided as I managed to think straight. I saw that in offering me birthday wishes in the newspaper, my birth family were not about to reject me. I never in my wildest dreams imagined this scenario. Oh my goodness, they wanted me! They were looking for me! The notice contained contact details for Jigsaw and invited me to write to them through the agency. Since I had just posted my letter the day before to the exact same address, there was nothing else to do. I just had to wait.
Within a week a letter arrived to say there was a match. What I didn't know at the time was that the person who had received my letter at Jigsaw was actually my paternal grandmother. Incredibly, she was the one who then wrote back to me, and followed up with a phone call to make arrangements for a meeting. At this stage she didn't give away who she really was. I simply presumed she was a representative from Jigsaw, but little did I know after I put down the phone that I had just spoken to my first blood relative.
On the day that we were due to get together, I decided I would meet her on my own, but the phone rang and a new person told me that she was a representative from Barnardos, a social services agency, and that she was going to come and see me instead of the person I had spoken to from Jigsaw. This change of plans sent my anxiety through the roof and I reached for a cigarette. Thoughts whirled around my mind: Why was Barnardos getting involved? What might have gone wrong? Didn't they want to meet me now? When the social worker arrived at my house, I made her a cup of tea and we sat down and this was when she told me the truth — that in fact it was my birth grandmother whom I had spoken to at Jigsaw.
I felt like I was going to faint. I couldn't take it all in. My grandmother was looking for me. Not my birth mother? According to the social worker, she had joined Jigsaw many years earlier in the hope of one day finding me. I recalled a vague memory — at the time my parents had adopted me, they had been told that the paternal grandmother had not been happy about the adoption, and that they needed to "cover their tracks".
Had she been looking for me ever since? The social worker explained that my grandmother decided at the last minute it would be unfair to turn up to the meeting without my knowing who she really was. As I tried to process everything, she then said that my grandmother was waiting in a local motel, hoping I would still want to meet with her. What could I say? I felt pressured but, as she had driven all the way from Auckland to Wellington to meet me, I didn't feel I could say no.
I agreed for my grandmother to come to our home the next day. I endured another anxious night of waiting. Emotionally it felt like I had entered a kind of vortex; my familiar world was receding, and a new landscape was emerging that I had little choice in or control over. This left me feeling extremely vulnerable. Why was my grandmother the one who was searching? What had happened to my birth parents? Was there something terrible she needed to tell me about them?
The following evening my grandmother Peggy knocked on the door. As I opened it, I remember searching her face for a resemblance. I didn't find it. What I saw was an attractive older woman, stylishly dressed and beautifully spoken. I suddenly felt awkward and didn't know what to do. I had written to Jigsaw hoping to find my birth parents; instead my grandmother was standing in front of me. We went into the lounge and she began to tell me the story of my birth parents. She said they had met at a dance in Wellington and fallen in love. She handed me photos of each of them and I could see a likeness, then she showed me a photo of them dancing in each other's arms at a ball together.
Jo Willis' grandmother Peggy. Photo / Supplied
A complex mix of emotions washed over me — relief that the search was over, elation at the image of them looking so happy together, but also sadness at the thought of what must have followed this happy scene. These people were my birth parents!
My grandmother said that her son knew she was meeting with me, but my birth mother had not yet been contacted. She thought she was living in Australia but she wasn't sure how my birth mother would feel about the news that I had been found.
Disappointment hit me. My birth mother hadn't been searching for me at all. Rejection crept in. For all those years my dream had been that she was the one looking for me. That my grandmother had been searching did feel like a compliment, but it did not compensate for the fact that my birth mother had not been. My longings had all been focused on her. She was the one I'd fantasised about, the one I had dreamed of being reunited with.
As a child I had formed a belief based on the social norms of the era that my birth father was a bad man who had abandoned my birth mother when he found out she was pregnant. I never imagined for one minute that I would first know who he was, let alone meet him or members of his family.
I tried to swallow my disappointment. Here was my grandmother, wanting to know all about me and sharing information about my birth family. I remember looking at her, noticing her movements, every nuance in her voice, clinging to these stories about my entrance into the world. I savoured every word. They resonated like a beautiful song touching my heart. Thoughts of my birth mother and fears as to why she might be missing from this picture could wait.
'Her journey would have been much harder than mine'
In 1968, Brigitta Baker's parents already had two boys in Gore but, because her adoptive mother had had a hard time during pregnancy, they decided to adopt a girl to "round out" the family. After she had her own children, Baker decided she wanted to search for her birth mother before she turned 40.
After applying for her original birth certificate (she already had a copy of her post-adoption certificate), she found her birth mother's name. She then found her marriage certificate which revealed her new name. Her husband found a couple in the phone book with the right initials and called the number.
The floor seemed to drop away in front of me. I can't even describe the feeling — it was a mixture of elation and terror. I didn't know how to deal with the speed of the news, or the confusion I felt.
Andrew told me that my birth mother had answered the phone with the words, "Jan speaking", and he was immediately thrown. Was this the Janice we were seeking or someone different? He told her he was looking for a Janice Katherine Harvey and she said, "That would be me". Nervously he then asked if the name Brigitta meant anything to her.
She hesitated as if she'd misheard, then said, "It does".
Brigitta Baker's biological mum, Jan, with her daughters, Zoe and Jade. Photo / Supplied
He explained that he was my husband, that I was adopted, and that we thought I might be her daughter. At that point she simply said, "Yes, she is".
He asked if she would like to speak to me. She paused and then said, "If I don't speak to her now, I may never speak to her."
Realising that he hadn't cleared this with me yet, he said, "Shit, I don't know if she wants to talk to you!" They agreed that he would go and ask me and, whatever the outcome, one of us would call her back within the next 10 minutes.
As soon as he relayed this conversation to me, I knew I had to call her. Because I had convinced myself that my motivation for searching was to put to rest any fears or worries she had carried about me over the years, my whole focus was on her. I thought, she's a mother and I'm just going to tell her the things she wants to know. This thought got me over to the telephone and as I dialled the number, a strange calm came over me. I was doing this for her, not me. I knew her journey would have been much harder than mine. After one ring the voice of my other mother answered with an uncertain "Hello".
"Hi, it's Brigitta," I said. "How are you?"
The conversation lasted for almost two hours. I don't even remember most of what we talked about. She shared some of her background and the story of meeting my birth father. I told her exactly what I had wanted to say: that I had enjoyed a great life, had been raised by loving parents, and that she had done the right thing when she gave me up. She cried when I said those words and I could hear the relief in her voice. She told me her husband and family knew nothing about me and she had given up any hope of ever hearing from me.
We didn't make any specific plans, I simply told her at the end of the conversation that there was no pressure from me but I would like to stay in touch. I asked for her address so that I could send her some photos. She said she would write when she'd had a chance to process everything, but that it was difficult for her to speak on the phone because of her husband. He happened to be out that night, but she confessed if he'd been home, she might not have had the courage to speak to me. I wondered what this comment implied, but I was happy to do whatever she wanted and to take the next step at a pace she was comfortable with. I had read a little bit about how difficult reunion relationships could be, so I knew I didn't want to push her.
When I got off the phone, I felt completely drained, but a sense of calm remained. I had finally done the "right" thing. I'd pushed myself to make contact and because it had all happened so quickly and with such ease, I felt the timing was exactly as it should be.
Brigitta Baker with her biological dad, Bob. Photo / Supplied
Later would come the regrets — that I had left it so long, that I'd denied my birth mother the chance to know my children as babies, that I'd lost the opportunity to enjoy her mothering influence earlier in my life — but for that night I was at peace with the way things had unfolded. Andrew and I talked for hours after the call, dissecting every word she had said. We speculated about where things could go from here. I knew I wanted to meet her. I felt I was on an emotional escalator taking me ever upwards, and now I didn't want to get off.
Willis and Baker's new book/
Abridged extracts from Adopted By Jo Willis and Brigitta Baker Published by Massey University Press RRP $39.99 Out August 11
