In her book – A Hole in My Heart – Lorraine Dusky notes “You would be surprised how many little blond girls there are in the world when you are not looking for them. They are everywhere, filling your sightline like a chorus line of charming little dolls, reminding, mocking, making you aware of what you are missing, what you have done.

You stare at them, check out their clothes, absorb their little-girl movements and words.

The girl in the coffee shop with her mother. Another at the supermarket. Creating a scene at the mall. The daughter of a friend of someone you are dating, you can’t take your eyes off her, blonde, fine-bones and only a few months older than yours.”

Questions haunt a mother who has given up her child to adoption – Are my daughter’s parents good to her ? How is she ? Who does she look like ? Is she blonde like me ? Does she have my flat feet and his blue eyes ?

It is more than the girls themselves – an invitation to a baby shower. A picture of a baby in a magazine. Forsythia in a flower shop window. A family reunion.

I have this secret that makes me – different. Alien. Deep inside me there is a gnawing sense that I must find my daughter one day. Surely I am not the only one in this private hell.

It is good that the trend now is for – at the least – open adoptions.  And there are activists among those who were adopted themselves trying to reform the system to make adoption rare, if at all.

It is good.  It will stop some of the pain . . . as a society, we should care about our mothers and children more than we do.