Creativity and activism as an adoptee, a guest blog by Zara Phillips
If someone had said to me when I was younger that I would end up writing books, plays and a film on my experience as an adoptee I would never have believed them!
It just seemed to happen. The moment I started doing healing around my experience, I began to write. I had been a singer for a few years so was used to crafting songs. I had used words long before I understood how much they healed the soul.
I found my voice when I moved to the USA and joined organizations and groups. I was then invited to speak about my experience as an adoptee and to join a cause in New Jersey, where birth records were sealed, to help open records. I was so mortified that in America an adoptee could not even get their birth certificate that I was compelled to help. I loved the community.
I had also started to write about my experience. For me, becoming a mother was the catalyst. I could no longer contain all the emotions. I needed to know if other adoptees felt the same as me and it went from there. I wrote about everything—search, reunion, loss of adoptive parents—continuously trying to make sense of it all in the hope that my words would also help others. I never thought there would be so much to say! The lifelong impact of adoption is real. For some reason when I was little I thought when I grew up I would no longer be or feel adopted but none of that was true.
My sense of purpose today is to help connect with other adoptees. That is what drives me to make a difference.
Zara’s film Somebody’s Daughter, based on her book and one-woman stage show of the same title, is now available to view or rent on Amazon Prime in the UK and the USA, or on Apple TV. To find out more or to follow Zara on social media, visit her website. Zara will join us to talk about her film on Sunday, 19th January (via Zoom, adoptees only, register here).