Laura's Story.

I'm Laura, I'm 17 from Southampton, England. Before I was told about my conception I was always curious as to why I was nothing like my social father or as to why we never really got on or understood each other. It was always in the back of my mind that, perhaps, I was adopted or my Mum had an affair.

My social Father developed myloma (bone marrow cancer) when I was 13 and a couple of weeks after they told me about that he had a reaction to the steroids he was taking and started acting really strange. On the same day my Mum came in to my room in tears and told me that her and my 'Dad' needed to talk to me. I remember them sitting me down and explaining to me about how I was conceived that how my social father was infertile. Due to the state my social father was in when they were telling me, I wasn't told in the nicest way possible to say the least. I remember spending the rest of the day in my room in floods of tears thinking about what they had told me. I felt upset, angry, betrayed but, strangely above all, relieved. The man I had thought to be my Father who I had never got on with wasn't my biological Father after all. This may sound a bit mean towards my social dad, but there was things that had happened before I found out that I will never forgive him for. I felt angry and betrayed because it was like I'd been lied to about what is, in my opinion, a very important thing - to know who your father is and where you come from. I think people take that for granted unless they are in a situation like this. I also felt anger towards my parents for not telling anyone. Not even family members on my Mums side. It was asthough it was a shameful secret and I was in the middle of it all. I felt asthough I was the secret. Eventually, I told the family because I didn't like the secrecy of it all.

For the next couple of months after I was told I didn't really feel any interest in finding my biological father, or any other half siblings/relatives. But eventually, after the initial shock of finding out, I started to get curious. I emailed the doctor who helped my Mum concieve me and ended up having a meeting with him to talk about the possibility of me finding any relatives. He told me that there was little to no chance of me ever finding any one of my relatives, that all the records of donors had been destroyed and if I was born literally 3 months later than I was then I would have recieved non-identifying information about my donor but, being born in May 1991 means that I'm not entitled to any information on him at all. All I've been told is he possibly has dark hair and is tall.

I have been searching for relatives online but theres not a great deal I can do until I'm 18, which is in another 4 months (I've been counting the months since I first found out when I was 13!). When I am 18 all I can do is join donorlink UK, have a DNA test and hope they find a match. I've always felt that theres a part of me missing. A big part. Its almost as if I will never know who I am and where I've come from fully until I get information about my biological family. Information that might not ever come to me. All you can do is wait, and hope.