At the age of 27, Jamie Bennett saw his mother for the first time since his birth after being adopted.
They arranged to meet halfway in a pub and he spent all morning worrying about how it would play out.
Despite the table being booked for 1pm, wracked with nerves, he awoke at 4.30 in the morning to choose his outfit and get ready. He even smoked his cigarettes using a pair of BBQ tongs for fear his mum would be disappointed if she could smell smoke on him.
Jamie, now 33, played over in his mind whether or not there would be enough parking, if plenty of punters would be there for them to blend in casually, and anything else that could go wrong.
But when she walked through the door, it felt like home.
They were reunited after his mother, who wished not to disclose her name, gave him up for adoption in 1989 when she fell pregnant. It was an act of self-sacrifice, Jamie says, as she put his needs first for him to have the best start in life.
They came together again in his mid-twenties after he questioned his identity following feelings of anxiety and self-doubt. It was then that he learned for the first time he had a different name and three half brothers.
Jamie, from Stockport, is sharing his heartfelt story as statistics show over half of the children waiting for a permanent home come from certain groups where it takes an average of eight months longer to be adopted.
The IT salesman, who is on the board of trustees for charity Adoption Matters, was adopted by parents who had fertility issues via the Church of England adoption service. The couple, who had already adopted a son, taught him that he was special from the get-go and that it was good to be different.
There wasn't a definitive moment that he remembers learning that his parents weren't his biological mum and dad, and this was deliberate. They read him a bedtime story each night that explained his circumstance. It was phased into his daily routine and normalised.
"The story was about a normal kid going to school going about his normal life and then the last page said 'But I'm special because I'm adopted' and that was the launchpad for them to say 'like you, you're special, we chose you,'" Jamie told the Mirror.
Although he grew up with a positive outlook on his family life, as he grew older, these conversations stopped, and Jamie began to feel insecure and anxious about his identity.
His classmates asked uncomfortable questions and blurted out observations such as it being 'strange' that he looked like his adoptive brother. It soon became something that he felt he had to hide.
“Initially, I almost felt pity that others didn't get that adopted status," Jamie continued.
"But then there were moments - for instance, in year two my cousin, who went to the same primary school as me, came over and goes 'Hi, cousin-in-law'. He obviously didn't understand that concept very well but he was like, 'well you're not really my cousin are you because you were adopted? We're not related.'
"So there are little things like that I can remember in such high definition, but it's led me to want to talk about that more widely - why it's good to have a check-in process and a constant source of support because what that and a couple of other little events did, then just triggered me into thinking that there was something negative about this rather than it being that positive lift, that it was to begin with.
"Anyone's going to start developing their own insecurities and it's just part of growing up, isn't it? If you have that level of self-doubt, which then starts to be very charged by general hormones, it then translates to me as making this narrative that I was unloved or unwanted, a castaway.
"The reason for that is because the whole topic was just left alone."
Not knowing his biological family continued to play on his mind as he got older, and made things difficult when it came to providing a family history at health appointments, for example. He struggled to form deep connections and whilst now being fiercely independent, developed a need to be liked by others and was terrified of rejection.
His adoptive mum, who has since passed away, broached the subject when he was around 15 and again at 18. "I had that feeling of being the lonely satellite looking at the world," Jamie recalled.
"That means that you start to have deep-set difficulties with connecting because you're always feeling like you're on the outside, and then a lot of your maturity is built around that. And so connecting romantically with partners has always been difficult."
Around 10 years later, his friend, who was training as a social worker, checked to see if Jamie wanted to start the process of tracking down his real mum.
He mustered up the courage to go ahead and was introduced to a local government adoption agency before being signposted to Adoption Matters - who helped him be reunited with his birth mum. "What I'm hoping for with this campaign is the importance of the support process, storyboarding with children, and making sure it’s open and honest as this is the best practice," Jamie said.
"That is why we need these early signposts to catch these people that are having a blip if it's on their mind more than ever to make sure that there's a knowledge of what's out there." Step one was that the adoption service got in touch with the passport office, where he learned he had a different birth name.
He discovered he was born Thomas and that he had half-brothers living not too far away in Crewe. "It was well weird," he admitted.
"Identity was the crux of insecurity. So it was really confusing to know whether it had gone full fully one way of creating more of an identity issue or fully brought it back. Overall, it became a positive thing because it answered questions and it gave me that peace.
"I've realised my identity is centred around the name that I'd had for 27 years." He was able to obtain letters from his mum and he then reached out with the help of the agency who sought out the right address.
"The information I had gave me a bit of rest on the fact that it wasn't that I was unloved," he said. "There were lots of little things that settled me. She was younger than me when she wrote them, which is mad.
"It was revealed I had brothers and extra family, that was crazy. It hasn’t all been rosy, my birth father wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. But it filled so many voids in my knowledge, it fills the holes, and therefore you can feel like you're more complete and move on instead."
The next step was to meet his mum in person, but first he felt it right to explain what was happening to his adoptive dad, whose wife died a few years prior.
“I didn't want him to feel like I was seeking a replacement family. I was worried about it feeling that I was being a traitor," Jamie revealed. Laughing, he added: "And his response was just ‘I was wondering when you were going to do that.’
"The whole thing [meeting his mum] was just 'what the hell?' Normally I’m quite decisive but I was behaving completely irrationally, to be honest.
"We were meeting for lunch at 1pm and I got up at 4.30am to choose my outfit. I went and got my car washed. It was almost as if I was a teenager again, I didn’t want her to know I smoked.
"I think it was basically just the emotional enormity of it. I don't tend to suffer from general anxiety, but I was really particularly in my mind about the fact that I wanted there to be lots of parking at the pub. I wanted it to be open plan.
"On the one side, you've got the anticipation of it's going to be some like Davina McCall moment you've been waiting for when everything's going to just make sense. But on the other, there was just a shock - it's the first time I've ever been related to somebody.
"And then we got talking and within a very short space of time, we were just having a vibe and everything was great. Given that I've got 27 years backlog of insecurity regarding that the fact that I had never had a blood relative, it was almost like I was expecting a tidal wave.
"It was still great, but I've been learning about emotions as an adult that are so fundamental and primary, it's been a wonderful experience for me."
But when it came to how his mother felt, Jamie says he could see the pain through her smile. "I know that for years she's dealt with policy and being cut off until it is my desire but she has been wracked with not just' have I done the right thing?' But it was such an act of self-sacrifice," Jamie said.
"I could see the pain. I could actually see it. But what I was also seeing was excitement. It was a relief. It was somebody that's finally got some closure, but through the smile, I could see the pain."
Despite negative thoughts eating away at him in the past, he doesn’t feel resentment over his mother's decision. "The self-perpetuating spiral of negativity that I ended up experiencing as a teenager did fuel that exact thought of 'how dare you, how could you do that sort of thing.' Whereas actually, now I've got the full story. Absolutely not.
"I've experienced a very wonderful thing of self-sacrifice and love. The reality was I was double loved, and loved unconditionally from two different sides.
"We've gelled and blended so nicely. The whole family are just so wonderful. I've expanded my family, and it's got all of the qualities that people would wax lyrical about."
Jamie continues to have a great relationship with his birth mum, who he sees frequently. And his adoptive dad Malcolm even gets in on the family meet-ups and celebrations.
It is because of his story that he champions the need for adoptive parents to maintain a good sense of personal history and identity through storyboarding. This includes bespoke support for those involved in the process, the child, the adoptive family, and the biological parents.
Adoption Matters offer therapeutic support for the child and workshops for adoptive and biological parents on how to continue the conversation around adoption, as well as helping the child get back in touch with their biological family when they’re ready.
The latest available data shows there are 1,980 children waiting for adoption in England, with 990 of these (50%) waiting longer than 18 months since entering care. The majority of children waiting for adoption (59%, 1,170 children) come from specific groups repeatedly facing the longest delays in finding a home.
These groups include children aged five or over, children with additional and/or complex needs, brother and sister groups, and those from a Black and mixed heritage. Compared to children without these characteristics, children from these groups wait an average of eight months longer from entry into care to adoption, a total of 32 months.
The campaign has launched to find resilient parents for the children waiting the longest for permanent homes, and showcase the various means of support available for them. Jamie, who hopes to adopt one day in the future as a gay man, warns however that the process shouldn’t be reduced to a simple alternative to having biological children.
"You've got to recognise that there is a great deal of awareness training and additional support that will be required," he warned, as he calls for adoption to have a louder voice in society. "People who ignore the advice to be open and have a dialogue with adopted people probably do so because they fear opening a hurtful discussion, or maybe they just feel it reduces the feeling of parental bond.
"I think these factors are understandable because you only know what you only know... But my plea would be to listen to and observe the importance of identity to people and consider the implications of removing that from a person's life. I know these decisions often come from a place of love and the will to protect, but history shows consistently that the long-term damage of avoiding this topic is a greater pain and sometimes people never recover from discovering they were adopted later in life, or being left wondering who they are."
To help find parents for these children, the You Can Adopt campaign aims to encourage potential adopters by acknowledging that, while these groups of children will need additional support, the power of family and a permanent home can be transformational for these children, and a circle of support is available to help adopters on this journey. For more information, visit youcanadopt.co.uk.
