An Australian living in France I would very much like to make contact with a surrogate brother and/or sister. I desperately feel the need to communicate with someone who has traversed the same road. I am a 61 year old only “child”. I have hated it all my life, always being the odd one out with no brother or sister. My father was an only child too, and I have never been able to find out why I was also doomed to this solitary life. I find that I STILL have to explain to people that I don’t have any siblings and I STILL get the same looks of incomprehension and distrust that I first noticed at primary school. I get the feeling that they think it is my fault that I have to live like this. At primary school I used to hear other kids say that ” my [...]
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I’ve just read the article ‘Spoilt or spoiled’ in Therapy Today (April 2006) and felt moved to relate my own story. My only-child experience came about through being an illegitimate child born in the 1950’s. Placed in children’s home for the next 9 months or so certainly destroyed any hopes of a secure attachment. Eventually I was adopted, but remained an only child, as my adoptive parents were not able to take on any more children, as I was decreed by the social worker ‘quite a handful.’ Quite a damning label to have. Sadly, both for my adoptive parents and the resultant knock-on effect on myself that the realisation of being unable to have your own children had never been resolved. In fact it remains unresolved to this day and my ‘mother’ refers to the fact that she couldn’t have her own children nearly every time I see her. So, [...]
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