Adoption law reform. We’ve been saying those words for so many years. Many of us have expended hours, months, years of our lives to this end. To see the archaic 1955 Adoption Act and associated acts repealed.

And now, change is coming. Law reform is on the government’s agenda. They’ve convened a working group and outlined the scope of change.

So why am I not celebrating?

That episode where you realise your life is a 'statutory fiction'

If adoption secrecy were a game show, they’d call it called ‘How much do you really want this?’

Because I am adopted, I have no birth story. However, the state holds a large number of files on me. Legal documents, doctors notes, feeding recipes and home visit comments. Through these documents, I wish to build a picture of what happened to my mother and me.

As a child, my family saw the musical Oliver!. For days after, my adopting mother hummed and sang the theme tune:

Consider yourself one of us  
Consider yourself at home 
Consider yourself one of the family ….etc etc

The song is a bit of an earworm. I’d forgotten it and the memory until recently when I heard it on the radio.

If you’ve seen the film (or read Dickens), you’ll know that being ‘one of us in Oliver was conditional on acting the part. You had to abide by their code of thievery and obey Fagin, the orphan master.

It makes sense. Like Fagin’s gang, we humans are tribal.